In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1376: Proceedings of WADT'97, Tarquinia, 1997, pages 1-17. Springer-Verlag, 1998.
Abstract: The concept of abstract data types and the corresponding series of ADT-workshops have been most fruitfull for the development of algebraic specification techniques within the last two decades. Since abstract data types by now are well-established in all areas of Computer Science and algebraic specification techniques go far beyond their classical roots of universal algebra the name ADT-workshop has been changed to 'Workshop of Algebraic Development Techniques' where the acronym ADT has now a new interpretation. In this paper we discuss this shift of paradigms from 'Abstract Data Types' to 'Algebraic Development Techniques'. We show how the scope of algebraic development techniques has been extended from from algebraic specification approaches already and we make a proposal how the scope of this area can be seen today and in the future.
Keywords: algebraic develvelopment techniques, high-level replacement systems, graphs, graph transformations, algebraic specifications, Petri nets, statecharts.