Dipartimento di Informatica e Scienze dell'Informazione
From total equational to partial first order
M. Cerioli ,
Till Mossakowski and
Horst Reichel.
In E. Astesiano, H.-J. Kreowski and B. Krieg-Bruckner, editors,
Algebraic Foundation of Information Systems Specification,
chapter 3, pages 31--104, Berlin, 1999. Springer Verlag.
A preliminary version is in DISI-TR-96, 1996.
The focus of this Chapter is the incremental presentation of partial
first-order logic, seen as a powerfull framework where the
specification of most data types can be directly represented in the
most natural way.
Both model theory and logical deduction are described in full detail.
Alternatives to partiality, like (variants of) error algebras and
order-sortedness are also discussed, showing their uses and
limitations.
Moreover, both the total and the partial (positive) conditional fragment
is investigated in detail, and in particular the existence of
initial (free) objects for such restricted logical paradigms is proved.
Some more powerful algebraic frameworks are sketched at the end.
The compressed postscript version of the report version is available through anonymous ftp
at ftp.disi.unige.it, in
/person/CerioliM/IFIP96.ps.gz
(202082 Kb)