Tool Design for Structuring Mechanisms for Algebraic Specification Languages with Initial Semantics

In [18] a ML-program for computations in category theory, including an implementation of the semantics of specification-building operations for the language CLEAR [6] is presented. We propose a similar approach but use object oriented methods to achieve better abstractness, reusability and efficiency. We prove correctness and the worst case time bounds of the basic algorithm computing colimits on set diagrams. We show how the comma category representations of signatures, specifications and attributed graphs suggests colimit algorithms on the corresponding diagrams.