This paper takes a rst step towards the design and normalization theory for XML documents. We show that, like relational databases, XML documents may contain redundant information, and may be prone to update anomalies. Furthermore, such problems are caused by certain functional dependencies among paths in the document. Our goal is to nd a way of converting an arbitrary DTD into a well-designed one, that avoids these problems. We rst introduce the concept of a functional dependency for XML, and de ne its semantics via a relational representation of XML. We then de ne an XML normal form, XNF, that avoids update anomalies and redundancies. We study its properties and show that it generalizes BCNF and a normal form for nested relations when those are appropriately coded as XML documents. Finally, we present a lossless algorithm for converting any DTD into one in XNF.

New tools are presented for reasoning about properties of recursively defined domains. We work within a general, category-theoretic framework for various notions of `relation' on domains and for actions of domain constructors on relations. Freyd's analysis of recursive types in terms of a property of mixed initiality/finality is transferred to a corresponding property of invariant relations. The existence of invariant relations is proved under completeness assumptions about the notion of relation. We show how this leads to simpler proofs of the computational adequacy of denotational semantics for functional programming languages with user-declared datatypes. We show how the initiality/finality property of invariant relations can be specialized to yield an induction principle for admissible subsets of recursively defined domains, generalizing the principle of structural induction for inductively defined sets. We also show how the initiality /finality property gives rise to the co-induct...

. We present a general semantic universe of call-by-value computation based on elements of game semantics, and validate its appropriateness as a semantic universe by the full abstraction result for call-by-value PCF, a generic typed programming language with call-by-value evaluation. The key idea is to consider the distinction between call-by-name and call-by-value as that of the structure of information flow, which determines the basic form of games. In this way the call-by-name computation and call-by-value computation arise as two independent instances of sequential functional computation with distinct algebraic structures. We elucidate the type structures of the universe following the standard categorical framework developed in the context of domain theory. Mutual relationship between the presented category of games and the corresponding call-by-name universe is also clarified. 1. Introduction The call-by-value is a mode of calling procedures widely used in imperative and function...

. We present new sound and complete axiomatizations of type equality and subtype inequality for a first-order type language with regular recursive types. The rules are motivated by coinductive characterizations of type containment and type equality via simulation and bisimulation, respectively. The main novelty of the axiomatization is the fixpoint rule (or coinduction principle), which has the form A; P ` P A ` P (Fix) where P is either a type equality = 0 or type containment 0 and the proof of the premise must be contractive in a formal sense. In particular, a proof of A; P ` P using the assumption axiom is not contractive. The fixpoint rule embodies a finitary coinduction principle and thus allows us to capture a coinductive relation in the fundamentally inductive framework of inference systems. The new axiomatizations are more concise than previous axiomatizations, particularly so for type containment since no separate axiomatization of type equality is required, as in A...

Strong normalization results are obtained for a general language for collection types. An induced normal form for sets and bags is then used to show that the class of functions whose input has height (that is, the maximal depth of nestings of sets/bags/lists in the complex object) at most i and output has height at most o definable in a nested relational query language without powerset operator is independent of the height of intermediate expressions used. Our proof holds regardless of whether the language is used for querying sets, bags, or lists, even in the presence of variant types. Moreover, the normal forms are useful in a general approach to query optimization. Paredaens and Van Gucht proved a similar result for the special case when i = o = 1. Their result is complemented by Hull and Su who demonstrated the failure of independence when powerset operator is present and i = o = 1. The theorem of Hull and Su was generalized to all i and o by Grumbach and Vianu. Our result genera...

The statement S T in a -calculus with subtyping is traditionally interpreted as a semantic coercion function of type [[S]]![[T ]] that extracts the "T part" of an element of S. If the subtyping relation is restricted to covariant positions, this interpretation may be enriched to include both the coercion and an overwriting function put[S; T ] 2 [[S]]![[T ]]![[S]] that updates the T part of an element of S.

We present a generalisation of first-order unification to the practically important case of equations between terms involving binding operations. A substitution of terms for variables solves such an equation if it makes the equated terms #-equivalent, i.e. equal up to renaming bound names. For the applications we have in mind, we must consider the simple, textual form of substitution in which names occurring in terms may be captured within the scope of binders upon substitution. We are able to take a `nominal' approach to binding in which bound entities are explicitly named (rather than using nameless, de Bruijn-style representations) and yet get a version of this form of substitution that respects #-equivalence and possesses good algorithmic properties. We achieve this by adapting an existing idea and introducing a key new idea. The existing idea is terms involving explicit substitutions of names for names, except that here we only use explicit permutations (bijective substitutions). The key new idea is that the unification algorithm should solve not only equational problems, but also problems about the freshness of names for terms. There is a simple generalisation of the classical first-order unification algorithm to this setting which retains the latter's pleasant properties: unification problems involving #-equivalence and freshness are decidable; and solvable problems possess most general solutions.

We extend the programming language PCF with a type for (total and partial) real numbers. By a partial real number we mean an element of a cpo of intervals, whose subspace of maximal elements (single-point intervals) is homeomorphic to the Euclidean real line. We show that partial real numbers can be considered as “continuous words”. Concatenation of continuous words corresponds to refinement of partial information. The usual basic operations cons, head and tail used to explicitly or recursively define functions on words generalize to partial real numbers. We use this fact to give an operational semantics to the above referred extension of PCF. We prove that the operational semantics is sound and complete with respect to the denotational semantics. A program of real number type evaluates to a head-normal form iff its value is different from ⊥; if its value is different from ⊥ then it successively evaluates to head-normal forms giving better and better partial results converging to its value.

Introduction SAMSON ABRAMSKY (samson@comlab.ox.ac.uk) Oxford University Computing Laboratory 1. Introduction Game Semantics has emerged as a powerful paradigm for giving semantics to a variety of programming languages and logical systems. It has been used to construct the first syntax-independent fully abstract models for a spectrum of programming languages ranging from purely functional languages to languages with non-functional features such as control operators and locally-scoped references [4, 21, 5, 19, 2, 22, 17, 11]. A substantial survey of the state of the art of Game Semantics circa 1997 was given in a previous Marktoberdorf volume [6]. Our aim in this tutorial presentation is to give a first indication of how Game Semantics can be developed in a new, algorithmic direction, with a view to applications in computer-assisted verification and program analysis. Some promising steps have already been taken in this

We show how the Hindley/Milner polymorphic type system can be extended to incorporate overloading and subtyping. Our approach is to attach constraints to quantified types in order to restrict the allowed instantiations of type variables. We present an algorithm for inferring principal types and prove its soundness and completeness. We find that it is necessary in practice to simplify the inferred types, and we describe techniques for type simplification that involve shape unification, strongly connected components, transitive reduction, and the monotonicities of type formulas.