Categories for Software Engineering [Hardcover]

José L. Fiadeiro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 29, 2004

Demonstrates how category theory can be used for formal software development. The mathematical toolbox for the Software Engineering in the new age of complex interactive systems.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This book provides a gentle, software engineering oriented introduction to category theory. Assuming only a minimum of mathematical preparation, this book explores the use of categorical constructions from the point of view of the methods and techniques that have been proposed for the engineering of complex software systems: object-oriented development, software architectures, logical and algebraic specification techniques, models of concurrency, inter alia. After two parts in which basic and more advanced categorical concepts and techniques are introduced, the book illustrates their application to the semantics of CommUnity – a language for the architectural design of interactive systems. "For computer scientists, this unique book presents Category Theory in a manner tailored to their interests and with examples to which they can relate." Ira Forman, IBM "This book applies little-known yet quite powerful formal tools from category theory to software structures: designs, architectures, patterns, and styles. Rather than focus on issues at the level of computational models and semantics, it instead applies these tools to some of the problems facing the sophisticated software architect. The terminology and mind set (Parts 1 and 2), while different from many common approaches, can provide startlingly concise expression of key properties of software systems (Part 3), and give rigorous meaning to entire families of box-and-line architecture drawings. It is applicable to the formal specification, decomposition, and composition of service-oriented architectures." Desmond D'Souza, Kinetium

About the Author

 Professor at the University of Leicester; Visiting Scientist at Imperial College, King’s College London, SRI International and the University of Pisa; Chairman of the IFIP WG1.3 – Foundations of System Specification; Chairman of the Steering Committee of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software; Winner of an IBM Award in 1996 for his work on Emergence in Complex Software Systems

Product Details

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (November 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3540209093
• ISBN-13: 978-3540209096
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,293,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't Waste You're Money or Time, February 21, 2009

By 

A Student (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Categories for Software Engineering (Hardcover)

I had high hopes for this book, but I was greatly disappointed. The publisher misrepresents the content of this book and hence has incurred my wrath which you will read below.

This book purports to give a "gentle, software engineering oriented introduction to category theory" (see back cover). This is false. There is nothing gentle about this book. I think Springer more than any other publisher attempts to publish books buy academic 'experts'. The usual result, and what we have here, is a book written by an expert that appears to be a cut and paste job of the text and Latex files from their academic papers with very little value added in the way of explanations for the non peer, non expert.

Certainly this author gives lip service to 'gently introducing' the material in the first chapter, and the first section of the second chapter seems reasonable. The author then dives into throwing truly dense mathematical notation at the reader for the remainder of the book. I have a BS degree in Math so I'm used to dense notation, but with no or confusing explanations it can be very rough going indeed.

Also, the prose of the text is littered with references to the literature which the author uses as a 'copout'; ie the author repeatedly tells the read to consult reference [x] for more information. This is typical, the reader is expected to do the work; both in hunting down the actual references, and putting the peices together because this author provides very little assistance. One may ask why the author even bothered?

The book is divided into 3 sections:

Section 1: This is the introduction to Category Theory. The author states that Categories are different but equivalent formulation of mathematics than Set theory. Then proceeds to define Categories thru set theory. Okay, I've studied a lot of math, I can handle that. The author then goes on to define Categories as being compositions of nodes and edges over graphs. At this point the notation becomes so dense and the prose so excruciating I couldn't follow it anymore. At no point past the first section of chapter 2 does the author let up and give the reader an overview of what he's getting at.

Section 2: Advanced Topics. I didn't even try to read this.

Section 3: Applications. The author presents work he was involved with concerning an 'architectural' description language, CommUnity. Apparently CommUnity is related to other concurrency oriented languages in the CSP/CCP style. Supposedly, the constructs of the language can be modeled via some Categories the author develops in the preceding chapters. The examples are so simple (as are typical for these types of academic languages) to be completely meaningless. Again, the author goes into excruciating minute detail about obscure topics without ever giving the reader a hint why anything is relevant.

With this type of book the writer is writing for his peers and to have a book on his CV. Where's the value for you and I, the non experts? I found very little value in this book. I recommend checking it out at your library (if possible) before purchasing to see what you're buying.