Michel Bidoit - Böcker

CASL, the Common Algebraic Specification Language, was designed by the members of CoFI, the Common Framework Initiative for algebraic specification and development, and is a general-purpose language for practical use in software development for specifying both requirements and design. CASL is already regarded as a de facto standard, and various sublanguages and extensions are available for specific tasks. This book illustrates and discusses how to write CASL specifications. The authors first describe the origins, aims and scope of CoFI, and review the main concepts of algebraic specification languages. The main part of the book explains CASL specifications, with chapters on loose, generated and free specifications, partial functions, sub- and supersorts, structuring specifications, genericity and reusability, architectural specifications, and version control. The final chapters deal with tool support and libraries, and present a realistic case study involving the standard benchmark for comparing specification frameworks. The book is aimed at software researchers and professionals, and follows a tutorial style with highlighted points, illustrative examples, and a full specification and library index. A separate, complementary LNCS volume contains the CASL Reference Manual.

Methods for the algebraic specification of abstract data types were proposed in the early 1970s in the USA and Canada and became a major research issue in Europe shortly afterwards. Since then the algebraic approach has come to play a central role in research on formal specification and development, as its range of applications was extended to the specification of complete software systems, to the formal description of the program development process, and to the uniform definition of syntax and semantics of programming languages. Today this approach extends beyond just software to the development of integrated hardware and software systems. These flourishing activities in the area of algebraic specifications have led to an abundance of approaches, theories and concepts, which have universal algebra, category theory and logic as a common mathematical basis. This volume is an annotated bibliography which provides an up-to-date overview of past and present work on algebraic specification. No attempt is made to provide a coherent introduction to the topic for beginners; the intention is rather to provide a guide to the current literature for researchers in algebraic specification and neighboring fields. Some indications of how the different approaches are related are included, together with some ideas concerning possible future directions.

The algebraic specification of abstract data types has beena flourishing research topic in computer science since 1974. The main goal of this work isto evolve theoreticalfoundations and a methodology to support the design andformal development of reliable software. This volume gives the proceedings of the Eighth Workshop onSpecification of Abstract Data Types, held jointly with theThird COMPASS workshop near Paris in August 1991. The maintopics covered by the joint workshop are:- specification languagesand program development- algebraic specification of concurrency- theorem proving- object-oriented specifications- order-sorted algebras- abstract implementation and behavioral semantics. The volume contains four invited surveys and twelvecontributed papers, all of which underwent a carefulrefereeing process.