The essentials of comprehensible specifications of business and of system artefacts ought to be used by, and therefore understandable to, all customers of these specifications - business subject matter experts, decision makers, analysts, IT architects and developers. These documents have to be understood in the same manner by all stakeholders. And, as C.A.R. Hoare observed, only abstraction "enables a chief programmer or manager to exert real technical control over his teams, without delving into the morass of technical detail with which his programmers are often tempted to overwhelm him."

The book brings together theoreticians and practitioners to report their experience with making semantics precise, clear, concise and explicit in business specifications, business designs, and system specifications. It includes both theoretical and very pragmatic papers based on solid and clearly specified foundations. These seemingly different papers address different aspects of a single problem - they are all about understanding of business enterprises and of information systems (computer-based or not) that these enterprises rely upon. A substantial number of papers demonstrate that good business (and IT) specifications ought to start with the stable basics of the relevant business domains, thus providing a foundation for describing and evaluating the details of apparently "always changing" requirements.

Object-Oriented Behavioral Specifications encourages builders of complex information systems to accelerate their move to using the approach of a scientific discipline in analysis rather than the approach of a craft. The focus is on understanding customers' needs and on precise specification of understanding gained through analysis. Specifications must bridge any gaps in understanding about business rules among customers, Subject Matter Experts, and `computer people', must inform decisions about reuse of software and systems, and must enable review of semantics over time. Specifications need to describe semantics rather than syntax, and to do that in an abstract and precise manner, in order to create software systems that satisfy business rules. The papers in this book show various ways of designing elegant and clear specifications which are reusable, lead to savings of intellectual effort, time, and money, and which contribute to the reliability of software and systems. Object-Oriented Behavioral Specifications offers a fresh treatment of the object-oriented paradigm by examining the limitations of traditional OO methodologies and by describing the significance of competing trends in OO modeling. The book builds on four years of successful OOPSLA workshops (1991-1995) on behavior semantics. This book deals with precise specifications of `what' is accomplished by the business and `what' is to be done by a system. The book includes descriptions of successful use of abstract and precise specification in industry. It draws on the experience of experts from industrial and academic settings and benefits from international participation. Collective behavior, neglected in some treatment of the OO paradigm, is addressed explicitly in this book. The book does not take `reuse' of specifications or software for granted, but furnishes a foundation for taking as rigorous an approach to reuse decisions as to precise specifications in original developments.

Behavioral Specifications of Businesses and Systems deals with the reading, writing and understanding of specifications. The papers presented in this book describe useful and sometimes elegant concepts, good practices (in programming and in specifications), and solid underlying theory that is of interest and importance to those who deal with increased complexity of business and systems. Most concepts have been successfully used in actual industrial projects, while others are from the forefront of research. Authors include practitioners, business thinkers, academics and applied mathematicians. These seemingly different papers address different aspects of a single problem - taming complexity. Behavioral Specifications of Businesses and Systems emphasizes simplicity and elegance in specifications without concentrating on particular methodologies, languages or tools. It shows how to handle complexity, and, specifically, how to succeed in understanding and specifying businesses and systems based upon precise and abstract concepts. It promotes reuse of such concepts, and of constructs based on them, without taking reuse for granted. Behavioral Specifications of Businesses and Systems is the second volume of papers based on a series of workshops held alongside ACM's annual conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems Languages and Applications (OOPSLA) and European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP). The first volume, Object-Oriented Behavioral Specifications, edited by Haim Kilov and William Harvey, was published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1996.

Behavioral Specifications of Businesses and Systems deals with the reading, writing and understanding of specifications. The papers presented in this book describe useful and sometimes elegant concepts, good practices (in programming and in specifications), and solid underlying theory that is of interest and importance to those who deal with increased complexity of business and systems. Most concepts have been successfully used in actual industrial projects, while others are from the forefront of research. Authors include practitioners, business thinkers, academics and applied mathematicians. These seemingly different papers address different aspects of a single problem - taming complexity. Behavioral Specifications of Businesses and Systems emphasizes simplicity and elegance in specifications without concentrating on particular methodologies, languages or tools. It shows how to handle complexity, and, specifically, how to succeed in understanding and specifying businesses and systems based upon precise and abstract concepts. It promotes reuse of such concepts, and of constructs based on them, without taking reuse for granted. Behavioral Specifications of Businesses and Systems is the second volume of papers based on a series of workshops held alongside ACM's annual conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems Languages and Applications (OOPSLA) and European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP). The first volume, Object-Oriented Behavioral Specifications, edited by Haim Kilov and William Harvey, was published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1996.

Object-Oriented Behavioral Specifications encourages builders of complex information systems to accelerate their move to using the approach of a scientific discipline in analysis rather than the approach of a craft. The focus is on understanding customers' needs and on precise specification of understanding gained through analysis. Specifications must bridge any gaps in understanding about business rules among customers, Subject Matter Experts, and `computer people', must inform decisions about reuse of software and systems, and must enable review of semantics over time. Specifications need to describe semantics rather than syntax, and to do that in an abstract and precise manner, in order to create software systems that satisfy business rules. The papers in this book show various ways of designing elegant and clear specifications which are reusable, lead to savings of intellectual effort, time, and money, and which contribute to the reliability of software and systems. Object-Oriented Behavioral Specifications offers a fresh treatment of the object-oriented paradigm by examining the limitations of traditional OO methodologies and by describing the significance of competing trends in OO modeling. The book builds on four years of successful OOPSLA workshops (1991-1995) on behavior semantics. This book deals with precise specifications of `what' is accomplished by the business and `what' is to be done by a system. The book includes descriptions of successful use of abstract and precise specification in industry. It draws on the experience of experts from industrial and academic settings and benefits from international participation. Collective behavior, neglected in some treatment of the OO paradigm, is addressed explicitly in this book. The book does not take `reuse' of specifications or software for granted, but furnishes a foundation for taking as rigorous an approach to reuse decisions as to precise specifications in original developments.

"In the mathematics I can report no deficience, except that it be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. " Roger Bacon (1214?-1294?) "Mathematics-the art and science of effective reasoning. " E. W. Dijkstra, 1976 "A person who had studied at a good mathematical school can do anything. " Ye. Bunimovich, 2000 This is the third book published by Kluwer based on the very successful OOPSLA workshops on behavioral semantics (the first two books were published in 1996 [KH 1996] and 1999 [KRS 1999]). These workshops fostered precise and explicit specifications of business and system semantics, independently of any (possible) realization. Some progress has been made in these areas, both in academia and in industry. At the same time, in too many cases only lip service to elegant specifica tions of semantics has been provided, and as a result the systems we build or buy are all too often not what they are supposed to be. We used to live with that, and quite often users relied on human intermediaries to "sort the things out. " This approach worked perfectly well for a long time.