TITLE: Formalizing the Semantics of ASCEND
AUTHORS: Bhargava, H., Krishnan, R., and Piela, P.
PUBLICATION: Proceedings of the 27th Hawaii International Conference on 
the System Sciences.
PUBLISHER: IEEE Computer Society Press
DATE: 1994
ABSTRACT: ASCEND (Piela, etal. 1992) is a declarative and strongly-typed 
executable equational modeling language. Originally developed to support 
engineering design, it has since been applied in various other domains. 
ASCEND is distinctive in its use of strong typing for integrating data and 
algebraic modeling, and in providing model structuring operators which 
facilitate model reuse (Krishnan, etal.,1993). In this paper, we develop a 
declarative semantics for the type system in ASCEND. Our purpose is to 
clarify the meaning of ASCEND constructs (thereby also explaining the 
operational semantics embodied in the ASCEND compiler),and to enable a 
systematic and principled investigation of modifications to the language. 
Our approach is based on formal logic in particular, the embedded languages 
technique (Bhargava & Kimbrough, 1993).