Foundations of rule-based design of modular systems (Q1176249)

The paper tackles the problem of designing modular systems. In previous papers the author has proposed a modular approach to the development of large software systems based on the formalization of a module specification. This notion is an extension of the notion of algebraic specification of abstract data types. It consists of four components: an import interface, an export interface, a parameter part that they share, and a body. The four parts are represented by algebraic specifications. The interconnection mechanisms of module specifications needed for the stepwise modular development of systems are modelled as operations on module specifications. The problem discussed in the paper is the following: given a library of module specifications and the specification of a basic data typer realized in the environment, is it possible to design a modular system, using the given library, which realizes a goal specification? The chosen approach views the visible part of a module (namely the interfaces and their shared parameter part) as a production. The library of modules consists in a set of productions (each realized by possibly more than one body), the basic data types are represented by the initial specification and the answer to the problem is affirmative when the goal specification can be generated from a subspecification of the initial configuration using the library productions. Each direct derivation and each combination of productions corresponds to an operation on the module specifications represented as productions by their interfaces. So the final parallel derivation sequence from a subspecification of the basic data type specification to the goal specification can be translated into a modular design which, given an algebra of the built-in type, provides an algebra of the goal type. Productions, derivations and operations upon them are defined as in the so called algebraic approach to graph grammars.