This paper generalizes many-sorted algebra (hereafter, MSA) to order-sorted algebra (hereafter, OSA) by allowing a partial ordering relation on the set of sorts. This supports abstract data types with multiple inheritance (in roughly the sense of object-oriented programming), several forms of polymorphism and overloading, partial operations (as total on equationally defined subsorts), exception handling, and an operational semantics based on term rewriting. We give the basic algebraic constructions for OSA, including quotient, image, product and term algebra, and we prove their basic properties, including Quotient, Homomorphism, and Initiality Theorems. The paper's major mathematical results include a notion of OSA deduction, a Completeness Theorem for it, and an OSA Birkhoff Variety Theorem. We also develop conditional OSA, including Initiality, Completeness, and McKinsey-Malcev Quasivariety Theorems, and we reduce OSA to (conditional) MSA, which allows lifting many known MSA results to OSA. Retracts, which intuitively are left inverses to subsort inclusions, provide relatively inexpensive run-time error handling. We show that it is safe to add retracts to any OSA signature, in the sense that it gives rise to a conservative extension. A final section compares and contrasts many different approaches to OSA. This paper also includes several examples demonstrating the flexibility and applicability of OSA, including some standard benchmarks like STACK and LIST, as well as a much more substantial example, the number hierarchy from the naturals up to the quaternions.

This is an introduction to the philosophy and use of OBJ, emphasizing its operational semantics, with aspects of its history and its logical semantics. Release 2 of OBJ3 is described in detail, with many examples. OBJ is a wide spectrum first-order functional language that is rigorously based on (order sorted) equational logic and parameterized programming, supporting a declarative style that facilitates verification and allows OBJ to be used as a theorem prover.

This paper gives a short introduction to the algebraic specification language Spectrum. Using simple, well-known examples, the objectives and concepts of Spectrum are explained. The Spectrum language is based on axiomatic specification techniques and is oriented towards functional programs. Spectrum includes the following features: ffl partial functions, definedness logic and fixed point theory ffl higher-order elements and typed -abstraction ffl non-strict functions and infinite objects ffl full first-order predicate logic with induction principles ffl predicative polymorphism with sort classes ffl parameterization and modularization Spectrum is based on the concept of loose semantics.

Observing that networks are ubiquitous in applications for spatial databases, we define a new data model and query language that especially supports graph structures. This model integrates concepts of functional data modeling with order-sorted algebra. Besides object and data type hierar-chies graphs are available as an explicit modeling tool, and graph operations are part of the query lan-guage. Graphs have three classes of components, namely nodes, edges, and explicit paths. These are at the same time object types within the object type hierarchy and can be used like any other type. Explicit paths are useful because “real world ” objects often correspond to paths in a network. Further-more, a dynamic generalization concept is introduced to handle heterogeneous collections of objects in a query. In connection with spatial data types this leads to powerful modeling and querying capa-bilities for spatial databases, in particular for spatially embedded networks such as highways, rivers, public transport, and so forth. We use multi-level order-sorted algebra as a formal framework for the specification of our model. Roughly spoken, the first level algebra defines types and operations of the query language whereas the second level algebra defines kinds (collections of types) and type con-structors as functions between kinds and so provides the types that can be used at the first level.

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The SPECTRUM project concentrates on the process of developing well-structured, precise system specifications. Spectrum is a specification language, with a deduction calculus and a development methodology. An informal presentation of the SPECTRUM language with many examples illustrating its properties is given in [BFG+93a, BFG+93b]. The purpose of this article is to describe its formal semantics.

We propose to use order-sorted algebras (OSA) on multiple levels to describe languages together with their type systems. It is demonstrated that even advanced aspects can be modeled, including, parametric polymorphism, complex relationships between different sorts of an operation's rank, the specification of a variable number of parameters for operations, and type constructors using values (and not only types) as arguments. The basic idea is to use a signature to describe a type system where sorts denote sets of type names and operations denote type constructors. The values of an algebra for such a signature are then used as sorts of another signature now describing a language having the previously defined type system. This way of modeling is not restricted to two levels, and we will show useful applications of three-level algebras.

Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 4.5.4 Special Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 4.6 Semantics of Programming Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 4.6.1 Semantics of Ada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 4.6.2 Action Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 4.7 Specification Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 4.7.1 Early Algebraic Specification Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 4.7.2 Recent Algebraic Specification Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 4.7.3 The Common Framework Initiative. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 5 Methodology 57 5.1 Development Phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 5.1.1 Applica...