Swansea Algebraic Specification Seminar

Organiser: Markus Roggenbach

The 2003/4 series.

Talks

• Jose Fiadeiro (Leicester): Categorical structures for system modelling

  Tuesday July 5, 2005, and Wednesday July 6, 2005, Robert-Recorde-Room

  The focus of this series of lectures is the support that category theory can bring to the modelling of complex software systems. It consists of an introduction to basic and more advanced categorical concepts and techniques using examples drawn from concurrency theory, algebraic specification (namely institutions) and software architecture (the language CommUnity). Our ambition is to show how category theory can provide a unifying, truly 'universal' approach to the handling of different levels of complexity that arise in the development of large and interaction-intensive systems.

  The material will be delivered so as to address, as much as possible, the interests, doubts and curiosity of the audience. The pace will be largely dictated by the participants. The presentation will be supported by the book "Categories for Software Engineering", Springer 2004, meaning that topics that will not receive sufficient coverage can always be looked at in the book.

  Tentative schedule:

  1. The "social" life objects: categories vs sets

     "The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them", Saint-Exupery

  2. Universal constructions

     "Composition as conjunction" P.Zave & M.Jackson

  3. The "social" life of categories: functors

     Modelling in structured domains

  4. Functor-structured categories: fibrations

     The power of indexing

  5. The "social" life of functors: adjunctions

     The power of dualities

• Magne Haveraaen, Adis Hodzic, Anya Helene Bagge, Karl Trygve Kalleberg (Bergen, Norway): Moldable Programming

  Thursday, June 30, 2005

  (in co-operation with the Swansea PCV Seminar)

• Workshop on Formal Testing

  Tuesday, 12.4.2005, Board Room

  Schedule:

  • 9.30 Magne Haveraaen (Bergen, visiting Swansea): Testing from Algebraic Specification
  • 11.00 Holger Schlingloff (Berlin): Testing from Process Algebra
  • 12.30 - 14.00 Lunch Break
  • 14.00 Markus Roggenbach (Swansea): Semantics of CSP-CASL specifications
  • 15.30 Satish Mishra (Berlin): Overview on the ep2 system
• Peter Mosses: Foundations of Modular Structural Operational Semantics

  Friday, 11.2.05, 3:00 pm, Board Room

  Modular SOS (MSOS) is a variant of conventional SOS. Using MSOS, the transition rules for each construct of a programming language can be given incrementally, and they do not need reformulation when further constructs are added to the described language. MSOS thus provides an exceptionally high degree of modularity in semantic descriptions, removing a shortcoming of the original SOS framework.

  The crucial feature of MSOS is that labels on transitions are now morphisms of a category, and exploited to ensure the appropriate flow of information (such as environments and stores) during computations.

  The talk explains the foundations of MSOS, and illustrates how MSOS descriptions are written in practice. It also discusses standard notions of semantic equivalence for MSOS, and indicates how MSOS descriptions can be translated to Prolog.

• Retreat: What are the main challenges in AS?

  Presentations by JV Tucker, NA Harman, M Haveraaen (Norway), M Roggenbach; guest: J Zucker (Canada)

  Friday, 5.11.2004, Sketty Hall, 10.00 am - 5.00 pm

  Some pictures.

Forthcoming Talks

• How to teach Algebraic Specification?

  A discussion among JV Tucker, P Mosses, M Haveraaen, U Berger, N Harman, M Seisenberger, M Roggenbach

• Algebraic Specification and Floyd/Hoare-Logic

  John Tucker

• Specification and Computation with Topological Data types

  John Tucker

• History of Type Theory

  Anton Setzer, John Tucker

• Model checking and Games

  Faron Moller

• Theorem Proving

  Monika Seisenberger

• CSP as an Institution

  Markus Roggenbach