Effective solutions of recursive domain equations

Abstract

Solving recursive domain equations is one of the main concerns in the denotational semantics of programming languages, and in the algebraic specification of data types. Because we are to solve them for the specification of computable objects, effective solutions of them should be needed. Though general methods for obtaining solutions are well known, effectiveness of the solutions has not been explicitly investigated.* The main objective of this dissertation is to provide a categorical method for obtaining effective solutions of recursive domain equations. Thence we will provide effective models of denotational semantics and algebraic data types. The importance of considering the effectiveness of solutions is two-fold. First we can guarantee that for every denotational specification of a programming language and algebraic data type specification, implementation exists. Second, we have an instance of a computability theory where higher type computability and even infinite type computability can be discussed very smoothly. *While this dissertation has been written, Plotkin and Smyth obtained an alternative to our method which worked only for effectively given categories with universal objects