The main ideas underlying work on the model-theoretic foundations of algebraic specification and formal program development are presented in an informal way. An attempt is made to offer an overall view, rather than new results, and to focus on the basic motivation behind the technicalities presented elsewhere.

One promising approach for adding object-oriented (OO) facilities to functional languages like ML is to generalize the existing datatype and function constructs to be hierarchical and extensible, so that datatype variants simulate classes and function cases simulate methods. This approach allows existing datatypes to be easily extended with both new operations and new variants, resolving a longstanding conflict between the functional and OO styles. However, previous designs based on this approach have been forced to give up modular typechecking, requiring whole-program checks to ensure type safety. We describe Extensible ML (EML), an ML-like language that supports hierarchical, extensible datatypes and functions while preserving purely modular typechecking. To achieve this result, EML’s type system imposes a few requirements on datatype and function extensibility, but EML is still able to express both traditional functional and OO idioms. We have formalized a core version of EML and proven the associated type system sound, and we have developed a prototype

The behavioural semantics of specifications with higher-order logical formulae as axioms is analyzed. A characterization of behavioural abstraction via behavioural satisfaction of formulae in which the equality symbol is interpreted as indistinguishability, which is due to Reichel and was recently generalized to the case of first-order logic by Bidoit et al, is further generalized to this case. The fact that higher-order logic is powerful enough to express the indistinguishability relation is used to characterize behavioural satisfaction in terms of ordinary satisfaction, and to develop new methods for reasoning about specifications under behavioural semantics. 1 Introduction An important ingredient in the use of algebraic specifications to describe data abstractions is the concept of behavioural equivalence between algebras, which seems to appropriately capture the "black box" character of data abstractions, see e.g. [GGM76], [GM82], [ST87] and [ST95]. Roughly speaking (since there ...

Several proof-assistants rely on the very formal basis of Pure Type Systems (PTS) as their foundations. We are concerned with the issues involved in the development of large proofs in these provers such as namespace management, development of reusable proof libraries and separate verification. Although actual implementations offer many features to address them, few theoretical foundations have been laid for them up to now.

Process algebras are often advocated as suitable formalisms for the specification of telecommunication protocols and distributed systems. However, despite their mathematical basis, despite standardization attempts (most notably the Formal Description Technique Lotos), and despite an ever growing number of successful case-studies, process algebras have not yet reached a wide acceptance in industry. On the other hand, description languages such as Promela or Sdl are quite popular, although they lack a formal semantics, which should prohibit their use for safety-critical systems. In this paper, we seek to merge the "best of both worlds" by attempting to define a "second generation Formal Description Technique" that would combine the strong theoretical foundations of process algebras with language features suitable for a wider industrial dissemination of formal methods. Taking the international standard Lotos as a basis, we suggest several enhancements, which fall into three ...

This document formally defines the syntax and semantics of the Extended ML language. It is based directly on the published semantics of Standard ML in an attempt to ensure compatibility between the two languages. LFCS, Department of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland. y Institute of Informatics, Warsaw University, and Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. ii CONTENTS Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Behavioural equivalence : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 3 1.2 Metalanguage : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 3 2 Syntax of the Core 8 2.1 Reserved Words : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 8 2.2 Special constants : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 8 2.3 Comments : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 9 2.4 Identifiers : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 9 2.5 Lexical analysis : : : :...

Abstract The interface specification of a procedure describes the procedure's behavior using pre- and postconditions. These pre- and postconditions are written using various functions. If some of these functions are partial, or underspecified, then the procedure specification may not be well-defined. We show how to write pre- and postcondition specifications that avoid such problems, by having the precondition "protect " the postcondition from the effects of partiality and underspecification. We formalize the notion of protection from partiality in the context of specification languages like VDM-SL and COLD-K. We also formalize the notion of protection from underspecification for the Larch family of specification languages, and for Larch show how one can prove that a procedure specification is protected from the effects of underspecification.

. C Y NTHIA is a novel editor for the functional programming language ML in which each function definition is represented as the proof of a simple specification. Users of C Y NTHIA edit programs by applying sequences of high-level editing commands to existing programs. These commands make changes to the proof representation from which a new program is then extracted. The use of proofs is a sound framework for analysing ML programs and giving useful feedback about errors. Amongst the properties analysed within C Y NTHIA at present is termination. C Y NTHIA has been successfully used in the teaching of ML in two courses at Napier University. 1 Introduction Current programming environments for novice functional programming (FP) are inadequate. This paper describes ways of using mechanised theorem proving to improve the situation, in the context of the language ML [9]. ML is a stronglytyped FP language with type inference [4]. ML incorporates extensive use of pattern match...

. Essential concepts of algebraic specification refinement are translated into a type-theoretic setting involving System F and Reynolds' relational parametricity assertion as expressed in Plotkin and Abadi's logic for parametric polymorphism. At first order, the type-theoretic setting provides a canonical picture of algebraic specification refinement. At higher order, the type-theoretic setting allows future generalisation of the principles of algebraic specification refinement to higher order and polymorphism. We show the equivalence of the acquired type-theoretic notion of specification refinement with that from algebraic specification. To do this, a generic algebraic-specification strategy for behavioural refinement proofs is mirrored in the type-theoretic setting. 1 Introduction This paper aims to express in type theory certain essential concepts of algebraic specification refinement. The benefit to algebraic specification is that inherently first-order concepts are tra...

Component based design and development of software is one of the most challenging issues in software engineering. In this paper, we adopt a somewhat simplified view of software components and discuss how they can be conveniently modeled in a framework that provides a modular approach to formal software development by means of stepwise refinements. In particular we take into account an observational interpretation of requirements specifications and study its impact on the definition of the semantics of specifications of (parametrized) components. Our study is carried out in the context of Casl architectural specifications.