Designware: Software Development by Refinement

This paper presents a mechanizable framework for software development by re nement. The framework is based on a category of higher-order speci cations. The key idea is representing knowledge about programming concepts, such as algorithm design, datatype re nement, and expression simpli cation, by means of taxonomies of speci cations and morphisms. The framework is partially implemented in the research systems Specware, Designware, and Planware. Specware provides basic support for composing speci cations and re nements via colimit, and for generating code via logic morphisms. Specware is intended to be general-purpose and has found use in industrial settings. Designware extends Specware with taxonomies of software design theories and support for constructing re nements from them. Planware builds on Designware to provide highly automated support for requirements acquisition and synthesis of high-performance scheduling algorithms.