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| Software Blueprints: Lightweight Uses of Logic in Conceptual Modelling (ACM Press)
Hardcover
Author: David Robertson, Jaume Agusti
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Release Date: 1999-08-25
ISBN-10: 0201398192
ISBN-13: 9780201398199
List Price: $52.99
Average Customer Rating:
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Conceptual models are descriptions of our ideas about a problem, used to shape the implementation of a solution to it. Everyone who builds complex information systems uses such models - be they requirements analysts, knowledge modellers or software designers - but understanding of the pragmatics of model design tends to be informal and parochial. Lightweight uses of logic can add precision without destroying the intuitions we use to interpret our descriptions. Computing with logic allows us to make use of this precision in providing automated support tools. Modern information scientists need to know what these methods are for and may need to build their own. This book gives you a place to begin. Where do you start when building models in a precise language like logic? One way is by following standard paradigms for design and adapting these to your needs. Some of these come from an analysis of existing informal notations. Others are from within logic itself. We take you through a sample of these, from more commonplace styles of formal modelling to non-standard methods such as techniques editing and argumentation. Each of these provides a window onto broader areas of applied logic and gives you a basis for adapting the method to your own needs. Features: - Associated web site with detailed supplementary material and links. - Numerous examples from different methodological disciplines. - End of chapter exercises to aid understanding. - Navigational icons in the margins to help guide the reader through the material.
Concise models for what the software is to do
| Customer Rating: | The precise language of logic has so many uses in computer science, it is sometimes surprising that it is not more widely used. Ambiguity is a recurring problem in writing everything from the initial specifications to the final documentation. The formal statements of logic are by nature unambiguous, which would eliminate most of the problems of imprecision. However, there are two major obstacles to the widespread adoption of the language of logic:
1) Very few programmers understand the formal language and most do not have time to learn it.
2) If logic were to be used, it would require the writing of almost another complete set of specifications. Most programmers don't have time to write or won't write standard documentation Expecting a formal set is asking for more than can normally be delivered.
Despite this stiff mass of resistance, there are uses for formal logic, and many of those uses are described in this book. Most of the standard structures of software modeling are described using formal logic structures. If you do not have some experience in formal logic, then you will find most of this book very difficult to understand. However, if you have had the pleasure of some study in logic, then you will appreciate the conciseness and precision of the models that are constructed. To the initiated, they allow for the creation of some very elegant descriptions of what software is supposed to do.
All of the fundamental areas of logic in application to computer science are covered. Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises and solutions are included in an appendix. This book would be an ideal one for an advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate course in logic applied to computer science. To the extent that programming is mentioned, the languages are Lisp and Prolog.
Formal logic is sorely underutilized in computer science. Writing formal descriptions of your models and code demands a degree of intellectual rigor that cannot be achieved any other way. It is clear that the only true path to correct software is to be intellectually precise and the models in this book will help you do that. |
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