Algebraic Approach to Specification

This chapter presents an overview of the algebraic approach to specification. Like any specification, an algebraic specification is an abstract theory about some artifact. As a task, there are two aspects to algebraic specification: abstraction of data, or systems, in the form of such theories and their use in constructing more complex theories. This chapter is devoted to the former, while Chapter 12 is devoted to the latter. In terms of specification languages and the underlying mathematical concepts, the algebraic approach has several different variants. In this chapter, we consider a number of concepts commonly found in some of these languages.