Customer Reviews

Theory and Practice of Concurrency

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CSP is a process algebra (i.e. a mathematical theory of concurrency) developed by Tony Hoare (creator of the quicksort algorithm, and the notion of monitors for concurrent programming, among other things) for reasoning about concurrent systems. The theory of CSP provides practitioners with a framework for understanding concurrent, multi-threaded, and distributed systems, and the analytical tools necessary to ensure those systems are free of deadlock and livelock, and function correctly. Bill Roscoe's text is THE definitive work on modern CSP. Absolutely necessary for anyone who is serious about understanding and using CSP to specify, design, analyze, or think about any kind of concurrent system.

The book is broken roughly into thirds. The first third introduces the fundamentals of CSP, in a very readable fashion. The middle third covers the underlying theory of CSP, including all of the semantic models (denotational, algebraic, and operational). It's much heavier going than the first third, but is an invaluable reference for the finer points of CSP semantics. The last third of the book examines some practical applications of CSP, including network deadlock analysis and security protocol analysis. It is again very readable, and also presents some key ideas in the use of automatic verification tools with CSP. Working through the whole book will provide readers with a great foundation for understanding both the practicalities of specification and verification with CSP, and recently published theoretical results.

The best textbook for learning CSP. Dr. Hoare's original book is like a reference. This book explains concepts way better.