Algebraic Approach To Data Processing

The book explores a new general approach to selecting—and designing—data processing techniques. Symmetry and invariance ideas behind this algebraic approach have been successful in physics, where many new theories are formulated in symmetry terms. The book explains this approach and expands it to new application areas ranging from engineering, medicine, education to social sciences. In many cases, this approach leads to optimal techniques and optimal solutions. That the same data processing techniques help us better analyze wooden structures, lung dysfunctions, and deep learning algorithms is a good indication that these techniques can be used in many other applications as well. The book is recommended to researchers and practitioners who need to select a data processing technique—or who want to design a new technique when the existing techniques do not work. It is also recommended to students who want to learn the state-of-the-art data processing.

Inthe?eldofformalmethodsincomputerscience,concurrencytheoryisreceivinga constantlyincreasinginterest.Thisisespeciallytrueforprocessalgebra.Althoughit had been originally conceived as a means for reasoning about the semantics of c- current programs, process algebraic formalisms like CCS, CSP, ACP, ?-calculus, and their extensions (see, e.g., [154,119,112,22,155,181,30]) were soon used also for comprehendingfunctionaland nonfunctionalaspects of the behaviorof com- nicating concurrent systems. The scienti?c impact of process calculi and behavioral equivalences at the base of process algebra is witnessed not only by a very rich literature. It is in fact worth mentioningthe standardizationprocedurethat led to the developmentof the process algebraic language LOTOS [49], as well as the implementation of several modeling and analysis tools based on process algebra, like CWB [70] and CADP [93], some of which have been used in industrial case studies. Furthermore, process calculi and behavioral equivalencesare by now adopted in university-levelcourses to teach the foundations of concurrent programming as well as the model-driven design of concurrent, distributed, and mobile systems. Nevertheless, after 30 years since its introduction, process algebra is rarely adopted in the practice of software development. On the one hand, its technica- ties often obfuscate the way in which systems are modeled. As an example, if a process term comprises numerous occurrences of the parallel composition operator, it is hard to understand the communicationscheme among the varioussubterms. On the other hand, process algebra is perceived as being dif?cult to learn and use by practitioners, as it is not close enough to the way they think of software systems.

Mathematics has been used as a tool in logistical reasoning for centuries. Examining how specific mathematic structures can aid in data and knowledge management helps determine how to efficiently and effectively process more information in these fields. N-ary Relations for Logical Analysis of Data and Knowledge is a critical scholarly reference source that provides a detailed study of the mathematical techniques currently involved in the progression of information technology fields. Featuring relevant topics that include algebraic sets, deductive analysis, defeasible reasoning, and probabilistic modeling, this publication is ideal for academicians, students, and researchers who are interested in staying apprised of the latest research in the information technology field.

In the 1930s, mathematical logicians studied the notion of "effective comput ability" using such notions as recursive functions, A-calculus, and Turing machines. The 1940s saw the construction of the first electronic computers, and the next 20 years saw the evolution of higher-level programming languages in which programs could be written in a convenient fashion independent (thanks to compilers and interpreters) of the architecture of any specific machine. The development of such languages led in turn to the general analysis of questions of syntax, structuring strings of symbols which could count as legal programs, and semantics, determining the "meaning" of a program, for example, as the function it computes in transforming input data to output results. An important approach to semantics, pioneered by Floyd, Hoare, and Wirth, is called assertion semantics: given a specification of which assertions (preconditions) on input data should guarantee that the results satisfy desired assertions (postconditions) on output data, one seeks a logical proof that the program satisfies its specification. An alternative approach, pioneered by Scott and Strachey, is called denotational semantics: it offers algebraic techniques for characterizing the denotation of (i. e. , the function computed by) a program-the properties of the program can then be checked by direct comparison of the denotation with the specification. This book is an introduction to denotational semantics. More specifically, we introduce the reader to two approaches to denotational semantics: the order semantics of Scott and Strachey and our own partially additive semantics.

ACP, the Algebra of Communicating Processes, is an algebraic approach to the study of concurrent processes, initiated by Jan Bergstra and Jan Will em Klop in the early eighties. These proceedings comprise the contributions to ACP94, the first workshop devoted to ACP. The work shop was held at Utrecht University, 16-17 May 1994. These proceedings are meant to provide an overview of current research in the area of ACP. They contain fifteen contributions. The first one is a classical paper on ACP by J.A. Bergstra and J.W. Klop: The Algebra of Recursively Defined Processes and the Algebra of Regular Processes, Report IW 235/83, Mathematical Centre, Amsterdam, 1983. It serves as an introduction to the remainder of the proceedings and, indeed, as a general introduction to ACP. An extended abstract of this paper is published under the same title in the ICALP' 84 proceedings. Of the re maining contributions, three were submitted by the invited speakers and the others were selected by the programme committee. As for the presentations, Jos Baeten, Rob van Glabbeek, Jan Friso Groote, and Frits Vaandrager were each invited to deliver a lecture. A paper relating to Frits Vaandrager's lecture has already been submitted for publication elsewhere and is not, therefore, included in these pro ceedings. Gabriel Ciobanu, one of our guests, gave an impression of his work in an extra lecture. Furthermore, ten presentations were given on the basis of selected papers.

Methods for the algebraic specification of abstract data types were proposed in the early 1970s in the USA and Canada and became a major research issue in Europe shortly afterwards. Since then the algebraic approach has come to play a central role in research on formal specification and development, as its range of applications was extended to the specification of complete software systems, to the formal description of the program development process, and to the uniform definition of syntax and semantics of programming languages. Today this approach extends beyond just software to the development of integrated hardware and software systems. These flourishing activities in the area of algebraic specifications have led to an abundance of approaches, theories and concepts, which have universal algebra, category theory and logic as a common mathematical basis. This volume is an annotated bibliography which provides an up-to-date overview of past and present work on algebraic specification. No attempt is made to provide a coherent introduction to the topic for beginners; the intention is rather to provide a guide to the current literature for researchers in algebraic specification and neighboring fields. Some indications of how the different approaches are related are included, together with some ideas concerning possible future directions.

This book investigates the design of compilers for procedural languages, based on the algebraic laws which these languages satisfy. The particular strategy adopted is to reduce an arbitrary source program to a general normal form, capable of representing an arbitrary target machine. This is achieved by a series of normal form reduction theorems which are proved algebraically from the more basic laws. The normal form and the related reduction theorems can then be instantiated to design compilers for distinct target machines. This constitutes the main novelty of the author's approach to compilation, together with the fact that the entire process is formalised within a single and uniform semantic framework of a procedural language and its algberaic laws. Furthermore, by mechanising the approach using the OBJ3 term rewriting system it is shown that a prototype compiler is developed as a byproduct of its own proof of correctness.

This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Algebraic Development Techniques, WADT '98, held in Tarquinia, Italy, in June 1997.This book presents, besides three invited surveys, 21 carefully revised full papers selected from 40 presentations given at the workshop. The algebraic approach to the specification and development of systems, born as a formal method for abstract data types, encompases today the formal design of integrated hardware and software systems, new specification frameworks and a wide range of applications. This book presents the state-of-the-art in the area of algebraic software development.