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Algebraic implementation of abstract data types: a survey of concepts and new compositionality results

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2009

Fernando Orejas ,
Marisa Navarro  and
Ana Sánchez
Fernando Orejas
Affiliation:
Dept. Leng. Sist. Inf., Univ. Polit. Cataluña, Barcelona, Spain
Marisa Navarro
Affiliation:
Dept. Leng. Sist. Inf., Univ. del Pais Vasco, San Sebastian, Spain
Ana Sánchez
Affiliation:
Dept. Leng. Sist. Inf., Univ. del Pais Vasco, San Sebastian, Spain
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Abstract

In this paper we try to shed some light on the similarities and differences in the different approaches denning the notions of implementation and implementation correctness. For obvious reasons, we do not discuss all existing approaches individually. Instead, a formal framework is introduced in order to discuss the most important ones. Additionally, we discuss some issues, which in our opinion are often misunderstood, concerning transitivity of implementation correctness and its role in the software development process. In particular, on the one hand, we show that for reasonable notions of implementation, it is almost impossible to prove transitivity of implementation correctness at the specification level. On the other hand, we show that this is not really important if the programming language satisfies the properties of horizontal and vertical composition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Mathematical Structures in Computer Science , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , February 1996 , pp. 33 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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