Institutions formalize the intuitive notion of logical system, including syntax, semantics, and the relation of satisfaction between them. Our exposition emphasizes the natural way that institutions can support deduction on sentences, and inclusions of signatures, theories, etc.; it also introduces terminology to clearly distinguish several levels of generality of the institution concept. A surprising number of different notions of morphism have been suggested for forming categories with institutions as objects, and an amazing variety of names have been proposed for them. One goal of this paper is to suggest a terminology that is uniform and informative to replace the current chaotic nomenclature; another goal is to investigate the properties and interrelations of these notions in a systematic way. Following brief expositions of indexed categories, diagram categories, twisted relations, and Kan extensions, we demonstrate and then exploit the duality between institution morphisms in the original sense of Goguen and Burstall, and the "plain maps" of Meseguer, obtaining simple uniform proofs of completeness and cocompleteness for both resulting categories. Because of this duality, we prefer the name "comorphism" over "plain map;" moreover, we argue that morphisms are more natural than comorphisms in many cases. We also consider "theoroidal" morphisms and comorphisms, which generalize signatures to theories, based on a theoroidal institution construction, finding that the "maps" of Meseguer are theoroidal comorphisms, while theoroidal morphisms are a new concept. We introduce "forward" and "semi-natural" morphisms, and develop some of their properties. Appendices discuss institutions for partial algebra, a variant of order sorted algebra, two versions of hidden algebra, and...

: Hyperprogramming is an emerging semantics-based technique for the integration of diverse features of programming environments, in particular, rapid prototyping and formal methods. This approach generalizes the notion of module to that of module cluster , which is an association around a central formal specification of various items of programming information, such as interface, source code, compiled code, rapid prototypes, formal proofs, test cases, performance estimates, documentation, history and accounting information. This allows all information items to be composed at the same time, by evaluating a master text called a module expression, which tells how to compose and transform module clusters. Hyperprogramming thus integrates design, specification, prototyping, coding, configuration, proof, testing, documentation and accounting into a single framework significantly generalizing both Ada generics and Unix 1 make. Hyperprogramming can also support a variety of different progra...