This paper publicly reveals, motivates, and surveys the results of an ambitious hidden agenda for applying algebra to software engineering. The paper reviews selected literature, introduces a new perspective on nondeterminism, and features powerful hidden coinduction techniques for proving behavioral properties of concurrent systems, especially renements; some proofs are given using OBJ3. We also discuss where modularization, bisimulation, transition systems and combinations of the object, logic, constraint and functional paradigms t into our hidden agenda. 1 Introduction Algebra can be useful in many dierent ways in software engineering, including specication, validation, language design, and underlying theory. Specication and validation can help in the practical production of reliable programs, advances in language design can help improve the state of the art, and theory can help with building new tools to increase automation, as well as with showing correctness of the whole e...

Abstract. We present an institution of observational logic suited for state-based systems specifications. The institution is based on the notion of an observational signature (which incorporates the declaration of a distinguished set of observers) and on observational algebras whose operations are required to be compatible with the indistinguishability relation determined by the given observers. In particular, we introduce a homomorphism concept for observational algebras which adequately expresses observational relationships between algebras. Then we consider a flexible notion of observational signature morphism which guarantees the satisfaction condition of institutions w.r.t. observational satisfaction of arbitrary first-order sentences. From the proof theoretical point of view we construct a sound and complete proof system for the observational consequence relation. Then we consider structured observational specifications and we provide a sound and complete proof system for such specifications by using a general, institution-independent result of [6]. 1

Behavioural theories are a generalization of first-order theories where the equality predicate symbol is interpreted by a behavioural equality of objects (and not by their identity). In this paper we first consider arbitrary behavioural equalities determined by some (partial) congruence relation and we show how to reduce the behavioural theory of any class of algebras to (a subset of) the standard theory of some corresponding class of algebras. This reduction is the basis of a method for proving behavioural theorems whenever an axiomatization of the behavioural equality is provided. Then we focus on the important special case of (partial) observational equalities where two elements are observationally equal if they cannot be distinguished by observable computations over some set of input values. We provide general conditions under which an obvious infinite axiomatization of the observational equality can be replaced by a finitary one and we provide methodological guidelines for finding such...

. We introduce a concept of behavioural implementation for algebraic specifications which is based on an indistinguishability relation (called behavioural equality). The central objective of this work is the investigation of proof rules that first allow us to establish the correctness of behavioural implementations in a modular (and stepwise) way and, moreover, are practicable enough to induce proof obligations that can be discharged with existing theorem provers. Under certain conditions our proof technique can also be applied for proving the correctness of implementations based on an abstraction equivalence between algebras in the sense of Sannella and Tarlecki. The whole approach is presented in the framework of total algebras and first-order logic with equality. 1 Introduction Algebraic specification techniques allow one to formalize correctness notions for program development steps. Thereby an important role is played by observability concepts since it is often essential to abst...

The use of coalgebras for the specification of dynamical systems with a hidden state space is receiving more and more attention in the years, as a valid alternative to algebraic methods based on observational equivalences. However, to our knowledge, the coalgebraic framework is still lacking a complete equational deduction calculus which enjoys properties similar to those stated in Birkhoff's completeness theorem for the algebraic case. In this paper we present a sound and complete equational calculus for coalgebras of a restricted class of polynomial functors. This restriction allows us to borrow some "algebraic" notions for the formalization of the calculus. Additionally, we discuss the notion of colours as a suitable dualization of variables in the algebraic case. Then the completeness result is extended to the "non-ground" or "coloured" case, which is shown to be expressive enough to deal with equations of hidden sort. Finally we discuss some weaknesses of the proposed results wit...

algorithms for copies convergence

: This paper is an introduction to recent research on hidden algebra and its application to software engineering; it is intended to be informal and friendly, but still precise. We first review classical algebraic specification for traditional "Platonic" abstract data types like integers, vectors, matrices, and lists. Software engineering also needs changeable "abstract machines," recently called "objects," that can communicate concurrently with other objects through visible "attributes" and state-changing "methods." Hidden algebra is a new development in algebraic semantics designed to handle such systems. Equational theories are used in both cases, but the notion of satisfaction for hidden algebra is behavioral, in the sense that equations need only appear to be true under all possible experiments; this extra flexibility is needed to accommodate the clever implementations that software engineers often use to conserve space and/or time. The most important results in hidden algebra are ...

This article presents a new formal approach to testing. In the field of dynamic testing, as soon as a program fails for a test set, it is flagged incorrect. The remaining question is: how far can a successful program be considered as correct? We give a definition of program correctness with respect to a specification which is adequate to dynamic testing. Similarly to the field of abstract implementation, the idea is that in order to declare a program as correct, it suffices that its behavior fulfills the specification requirements. An intermediate semantic level between the program and the specification, called the oracle framework, is introduced in order to interpret observable results obtained from dynamic experiments on the program. This allows to give algebraic semantics (i.e. a set of models) to the program, compatible with the program behavior. Program correctness is then defined by some adequacy criterion between the specification semantics and the program semantics. We point ou...

Observability and reachability are important concepts in formal software development. While observability concepts allow to specify the required observable behavior of a program or system, reachability concepts are used to describe the underlying data in terms of datatype constructors. In this paper, we show that there is a duality between observability and reachability, both from a methodological and from a formal point of view. In particular, we establish a correspondence between observer operations and datatype constructors, observational algebras and constructor-based algebras, and observational and inductive properties of specifications. Our study is based on the observational logic institution [11] and on a novel treatment of reachability which introduces the constructor-based logic institution. Both institutions are tailored to capture the semantically correct realizations of a specification from the observational and reachability points of view. The duality between the observability and reachability concepts is then formalized in a category-theoretic setting.

This paper investigates the notion of dialgebra, which generalises the notions of algebra and coalgebra. We show that many (co)algebraic notions and results can be generalised to dialgebras, and investigate the essential dierences between (co)algebras and arbitrary dialgebras.