This paper surveys our current state of knowledge (and ignorance) on the use of hidden sorted algebra as a foundation for the object paradigm. Our main goal is to support equational reasoning about properties of concurrent systems of objects, because of its simple and ecient mechanisation. We show how equational speci cations can describe objects, inheritance and modules; our treatment of the latter topic emphasises the importance of reuse, and the r^ole of the so-called Satisfaction Condition. We then consider how to prove things about objects, how to unify the object and logic paradigms by using logical variables that range over objects, and how to connect objects into concurrent systems.

Modularisation is important for managing the complex structures that arise in large theorem proving problems, and in large software and/or hardware development projects. This paper studies some properties of logical systems that support the definition, combination, parameterisation and reuse of modules. Our results show some new connections among: (1) the preservation of various kinds of conservative extension under pushouts; (2) various distributive laws for information hiding over sums; and (3) (Craig style) interpolation properties. In addition, we study differences between syntactic and semantic formulations of conservative extension properties, and of distributive laws. A model theoretic property that we call exactness plays an important role in some results. This paper explores the interplay between syntax and semantics, and thus lies in the tradition of abstract model theory. We represent logical systems as institutions. An important technical foundation is a new ...

In a similar way as 2-categories can be regarded as a special case of double categories, rewriting logic (in the unconditional case) can be embedded into the more general tile logic, where also side-effects and rewriting synchronization are considered. Since rewriting logic is the semantic basis of several language implementation efforts, it is useful to map tile logic back into rewriting logic in a conservative way, to obtain executable specifications of tile systems. We extend the results of earlier work by two of the authors, focusing on some interesting cases where the mathematical structures representing configurations (i.e., states) and effects (i.e., observable actions) are very similar, in the sense that they have in common some auxiliary structure (e.g., for tupling, projecting, etc.). In particular, we give in full detail the descriptions of two such cases where (net) process-like and usual term structures are employed. Corresponding to these two cases, we introduce two ca...

This paper describes an approach to module composition by executing "module expressions" to build systems out of component modules; the paper also gives a novel semantics intended to aid implementers. The semantics is based on set theoretic notions of tuple set, partial signature, and institution, thus avoiding more difficult mathematics theory. Language features include information hiding, both vertical and horizontal composition, and views for binding modules to interfaces. Vertical composition refers to the hierarchical structuring of a system into layers, while horizontal composition refers to the structure of a given layer. Modules may involve information hiding, and views may involve behavioral satisfaction of a theory by a module. Several "Laws of Software Composition" are given, which show how the various module composition operations relate. Taken together, this gives foundations for an algebraic approach to software engineering. 1.1 Introduction The approach to module compos...

Distributed systems may be specified in Structured Modal Action Logic by decomposing them into agents which interact by sharing attributes (memory) as well as actions. In the formalism we describe, specification texts denote theories, and theories denote the set of semantic structures which satisfy them. The semantic structures are Kripke models, as is usual for modal logic. The "possible worlds" in a Kripke model are the states of the agent, and there is a separate relation on the set of states for each action term. Agents potentially share actions as well as attributes in a way controlled by locality annotations in the specification texts. These become locality axioms in the logical theories the texts denote. These locality axioms provide a refined way of circumscribing the effects of actions. Safety and liveness conditions are expressed (implicitly) by deontic axioms, which impose obligations and deny permissions on actions. We show that "deontic defaults" exist so that the specifi...

Eliciting the requirements for a proposed system typically involves different stakeholders with different expertise, responsibilities, and perspectives. Viewpoints-based approaches have been proposed as a way to manage incomplete and inconsistent models gathered from multiple sources. In this paper, we propose a category-theoretic framework for the analysis of fuzzy viewpoints. Informally, a fuzzy viewpoint is a graph in which the elements of a lattice are used to specify the amount of knowledge available about the details of nodes and edges. By defining an appropriate notion of morphism between fuzzy viewpoints, we construct categories of fuzzy viewpoints and prove that these categories are (finitely) cocomplete. We then show how colimits can be employed to merge the viewpoints and detect the inconsistencies that arise independent of any particular choice of viewpoint semantics. We illustrate an application of the framework through a case-study showing how fuzzy viewpoints can serve as a requirements elicitation tool in reactive systems. 1

The coalgebraic view on classes and objects is elaborated to include inheritance. Inheritance in coalgebraic specification (of classes) will be understood dually to parametrization in algebraic specification. That is, inheritance involves restriction (specialization), where parametrization involves extension. And cofree constructions are "best" restrictions, like free constructions are "best" extensions. To make this view on inheritance precise we need a suitable notion of behaviour preserving morphism between classes, which will be defined as a "coalgebra map up-to-bisimulation". AMS Subject Classification (1991): 18C10, 03G30 CR Subject Classification (1991): D.1.5, D.2.1, E.1, F.1.1, F.3.0 Keywords & Phrases: object, class, inheritance, coalgebraic specification, bisimulation 1. Introduction Two basic relations in object-oriented languages are: object o belongs to class C, and: class C inherits from class C 0 (see e.g. [20]). Class membership yields what is sometimes called a...

We formalise, using Category Theory, modularisation techniques for parallel and distributed systems based on the notion of superposition, showing that parallel program design obeys the "universal laws" formulated by J.Goguen for General Systems Theory, as well as other algebraic properties of modularity formulated for Specification Theory. The resulting categorical formalisation unifies the different notions of superposition that have been proposed in the literature and clarifies their algebraic properties with respect to modularisation. It also suggests ways of extending or revising existing languages in order to provide higher levels of reusability, modularity and incrementality in system design. 1 Introduction The role of Category Theory in supporting the definition of 'scientific laws' of system modularisation and composition has been recognised since the early 70s when J.Goguen proposed the use of categorical techniques in General Systems Theory for unifying a variety of notion...

The development of programs in modern functional languages such as Haskell calls for a wide-spectrum specification formalism that supports the type system of such languages, in particular higher order types, type constructors, and parametric polymorphism, and contains a functional language as an executable subset in order to facilitate rapid prototyping. We lay out the design of HasCasl, a higher order extension of the algebraic specification language Casl that is geared towards precisely this purpose. Its semantics is tuned to allow program development by specification refinement, while at the same time staying close to the set-theoretic semantics of first order Casl. The number of primitive concepts in the logic has been kept as small as possible; we demonstrate how various extensions to the logic, in particular general recursion, can be formulated within the language itself.

View merging, also called view integration, is a key problem in conceptual modeling. Large models are often constructed and accessed by manipulating individual views, but it is important to be able to consolidate a set of views to gain a unified perspective, to understand interactions between views, or to perform various types of analysis. View merging is complicated by incompleteness and inconsistency: Stakeholders often have varying degrees of confidence about their statements. Their views capture different but overlapping aspects of a problem, and may have discrepancies over the terminology being used, the concepts being modeled, or how these concepts should be structured. Once views are merged, it is important to be able to trace the elements of the merged view back to their sources and to the merge assumptions related to them. In this paper, we present a framework for merging incomplete and inconsistent graph-based views. We introduce a formalism, called annotated graphs, with a built-in annotation scheme for modeling incompleteness and inconsistency. We show how structure-preserving maps can be employed to express the relationships between disparate views modeled as annotated graphs, and provide a general algorithm for merging views with arbitrary interconnections. We provide a systematic way to generate and represent the traceability information required for tracing the merged view elements back to their sources, and to the merge assumptions giving rise to the elements.