Manuel A. Martins

Alexandre Madeira, Manuel A. Martins, Luís S. Barbosa

Hierarchical transition systems provide a popular mathematical structure to represent state-based software applications in which different layers of abstraction are represented by inter-related state machines. The decomposition of high level states into inner sub-states, and of their transitions into inner sub-transitions is common refinement procedure adopted in a number of specification formalisms. This paper introduces a hybrid modal logic for k-layered transition systems, its first-order standard translation, a notion of bisimulation, and a modal invariance result. Layered and hierarchical notions of refinement are also discussed in this setting.

Renato Neves, Luis S. Barbosa, Dirk Hofmann et al.

The original purpose of component-based development was to provide techniques to master complex software, through composition, reuse and parametrisation. However, such systems are rapidly moving towards a level in which software becomes prevalently intertwined with (continuous) physical processes. A possible way to accommodate the latter in component calculi relies on a suitable encoding of continuous behaviour as (yet another) computational effect. This paper introduces such an encoding through a monad which, in the compositional development of hybrid systems, may play a role similar to the one played by the 1+, powerset, and distribution monads in the characterisation of partial, non deterministic and probabilistic components, respectively. This monad and its Kleisli category provide a setting in which the effects of continuity over (different forms of) composition can be suitably studied.