Behavioural theories are a generalization of first-order theories where the equality predicate symbol is interpreted by a behavioural equality of objects (and not by their identity). In this paper we first consider arbitrary behavioural equalities determined by some (partial) congruence relation and we show how to reduce the behavioural theory of any class of algebras to (a subset of) the standard theory of some corresponding class of algebras. This reduction is the basis of a method for proving behavioural theorems whenever an axiomatization of the behavioural equality is provided. Then we focus on the important special case of (partial) observational equalities where two elements are observationally equal if they cannot be distinguished by observable computations over some set of input values. We provide general conditions under which an obvious infinite axiomatization of the observational equality can be replaced by a finitary one and we provide methodological guidelines for finding such...

Development graphs are a tool for dealing with structured specifications in a formal program development in order to ease the management of change and reusing proofs. In this work, we extend development graphs with hiding (e.g. hidden operations). Hiding is a particularly difficult to realize operation, since it does not admit such a good decomposition of the involved specifications as other structuring operations do. We develop both a semantics and proof rules for development graphs with hiding. The rules are proven to be sound, and also complete relative to an oracle for conservative extensions. We also show that an absolute complete set of rules cannot exist. The whole framework is developed in a way independent of the underlying logical system (and thus also does not prescribe the nature of the parts of a specification that may be hidden).

A precise and perspicuous specification of mathematical domains of computation and their inherently related type inference mechanisms is a prerequisite for the design and systematic development of a system for symbolic computing. This paper describes Formal, a language for giving modular and well-structured specifications of such domains and particularly of "mathematical objects". A novel framework for algebraic specification involving so-called "unified algebras" has been adopted, where sorts are treated as values. The adoption of this framework aims also at being capable of specifying polymorphism, unifying the notions of "parametric" and "inclusion" polymorphisms. Furthermore, the operational nature of the specification formalisms allows a straightforward transformation into an executable form.

We provide a semantic basis for heterogeneous specifications that not only involve different logics, but also different kinds of translations between these. We show that Grothendieck institutions based on spans of (co)morphisms can serve as a unifying framework providing a simple but powerful semantics for heterogeneous specification.

. We construct a representation of the institution of the algebraic