Update plans: a high level low level specification language
Hugh R. Osborne · Radboud Repository (Radboud University) · 1995
Preface -Lhis thesis is the result of work carried out between 1989 and 1994.During the first two years of this period I was a research assistant, at the University of Nijmegen, in Esprit Basic Research Action no.3147 (the Phoenix project), carried out in collaboration with Imperial College in London and GMD in Karlsruhe, and financed by the European Community.The remainder of the period I was an "AIO" (postgraduate research assistant) at the University of Nijmegen.I am grateful to both the European Community and the University of Nijmegen (and thus, indirectly, to the Dutch and European tax payers) for financing this research.Some of the work in this thesis has been presented earlier.In particular chapters two, three and four are based on work presented in [56, 57, 58, 59, 60].I would like to thank the many people who have contributed to the development of the ideas presented in this thesis.First and foremost, I would like to thank Hans Meijer, who originally developed Update Plans (then called Update Schemes) [53], and who has played a fundamental rôle in helping to develop and formalise the key concepts in this thesis.I would also like to thank Robert Giegerich, of the University of Bielefeld, whose ideas formed the inspiration for chapter eight and, indirectly, chapters seven and six.I would, of course, also like to thank my colleagues on the Phcenix project, and in particular Hendrick Lock (GMD, Karlsruhe), whose JUMP machine [47, 48] formed one of the first test cases for Update Plans, and Erik Meijer (KUN, Nijmegen) and Ross Patterson (Imperial, London), whose ÄMMachine [52] is specified in chapter four.Other people I would like to thank are Mark van den Brand, Todd Cook, Max Geerling, Wil Lamain, Kees Koster, Ineke Küsters, Greta Low and Harrie van Seters.The list would, of course, not be complete without mentioning Mariël, Sara and Tobias.Their patience and encouragement ( "Papa, wanneer is jouw boekje nou af?" [66]) were essential to the completion of this work.Sara deserves a special mention for designing the cover.