Relating CASL with Other Specification

In this work, we investigate various specification languages and their relation to Casl, the recently developed Common Algebraic Specification Language. In particular, we consider the languages Larch, OBJ3 and functional CafeOBJ, ACT ONE, ASF, and HEP-theories, as well as various sublanguages of Casl. All these languages are translated to an appropriate sublanguage of Casl. The translation mainly concerns the level of specification in-the-small: the logics underlying the languages are formalized as institutions, and representations among the institutions are developed. However, it is also considered how these translations interact with specification in-the-large. Thus, we obtain on the one hand translations of any of the abovementioned specification languages to an appropriate sublanguage of Casl. This allows us to take libraries and case studies that have been developed for other languages and re-use them in Casl. On the other hand, we set up institution representations going from the Casl institution (and some of its subinstitutions) to simpler subinstitutions. Given a theorem proving tool for such a simpler subinstitution, with the help of a representation, it can also be used for a more complex institution. Thus, first-order theorem provers and conditional term rewriting tools become usable for Casl.