The need for compositional proof systems: A survey

A survey is given of the main issues in compositional reasoning about state-based parallelism and of the history of their evolution, as reflected in the current literature. Compositional proof techniques are Presented as the proof theoretical analogue of Dijkstra's hierarchically-structured program development. Machine-support for compositional reasoning, and the relationship between compositionality and modularity are discussed. The issues when compositional reasoning about concurrency is successful, and when it isn't, are commented upon. Pointers to the other papers in this volume are provided.