Abstract
The authors define a relation, 'affects', between every pair of events based on a relation 'locally affects' for each process between each pair of events on the process. A mechanism for timestamping events is defined such that 'affects' relation, and so potential concurrency, between events can be inferred from their timestamps. A timestamping mechanism is presented such that potential concurrency can be inferred partially/completely and the extent of such inferring depends on the costs associated with the mechanism. Inferring 'affects' relationship can be used for debugging and for inferring potential concurrency between events in traces of executions.<>