The Programming and Proof System ATES: Advanced Techniques Integration into Efficient Scientific Software (Research Reports Esprit, 1)

Today, people use a large number of "systems" ranging in complexity from washing machines to international airline reservation systems. Computers are used in nearly all such systems: accuracy and security are becoming increasingly essential. The design of such computer systems should make use of development methods as systematic as those used in other engineering disciplines. A systematic development method must provide a way of writing specifications which are both precise and concise; it must also supply a way of relating design to specification. A concise specification can be achieved by restricting attention to what a system has to do: all considerations of implementation details are postponed. With computer systems, this is done by: 1) building an abstract model of the system -operations being specified by pre-and post-conditions; 2) defining languages by mapping program texts onto some collection of objects modelizing the concepts of the system to be dealt with, whose meaning is understood; 3) defining complex data objects in terms of abstractions known from mathematics. This last topic, the use of abstract data types, pervades all work on specifications and is necessary in order to apply ideas to systems of significant complexity. The use of mathematics based notations is the best way to achieve precision. 1.1 ABSTRACT DATA TYPES, PROOF TECHNIQUES From a practical point of view, a solution to these three problems consists to introduce abstract data types in the programming languages, and to consider formal proof methods.