This paper is concerned with models of SDT encompassing traditional categories of domains used in denotational semantics [7,18], showing that the synthetic approach generalises the standard theory of domains and suggests new problems to it. Consider a (locally small) category of domains D with a (small) dense generator G equipped with a Grothendieck topology. Assume further that every cover in G is effective epimorphic in D. Then, by Yoneda, D embeds fully and faithfully in the topos of sheaves on G for the canonical topology, which thus provides a set-theoretic universe for our original category of domains. In this paper we explore such a situation for two traditional categories of domains and, in particular, show that the Grothendieck toposes so arising yield models of SDT. In a subsequent paper we will investigate intrinsic characterizations, within our models, of these categories of domains. First, we present a model of SDT embedding the category !-Cpo of posets with least upper bounds of countable chains (hence called !-complete) and

this paper, is the analysis of notions of approximation aiming at explaining and justifying (order-theoretic) properties of categories of domains. For example, in [Fio94c, Fio94a], while studying the interaction between partiality and order-enrichment we considered contextual approximation which, in the framework we were working in, coincided with the specialisation preorder . But in the applications carried out in [FP94, Fio94a] we had to work with an axiomatised notion of approximation, instead of the aforementioned one, for the following two reasons: first, the specialisation preorder is not appropriate in categories of domains and stable functions (see [Fio94c]) and, second, we do not know of non-order-theoretic axioms making the specialisation preorder !-complete. To overcome these drawbacks another notion of approximation was to be considered. And, it was the second problem that motivated the intensional notion of approximation provided by the path relation. In fact, it is shown in [Fio94b] that under suitable axioms the path relation can be equipped with a canonical passage-to-the-limit operator appropriate for fixed-point computations; stronger axioms make this operator be given by lubs of !-chains

www.elsevier.com/locate/jsc We describe a new extension of the Todd–Coxeter algorithm adapted to computing left Kan extensions. The algorithm is a much simplified version of that introduced by Carmody and Walters