The Arrow Manifesto : Towards software engineeringbased on comprehensible yet rigorous

A novel formalizable speciication paradigm is proposed which makes it possible to solve a lot of speciication problems in software. The roots of the idea are in mathematical category theory; following its terminology we call our speciications sketches. Among the principal advantages of sketches are the following. Nice amalgamation of logical rigor and graphical evidence. Sketches are graph-based images yet they are precise formal speciications as rigor as, say, rst order logic theories. Universality, in the precise sense of the word. It can be mathematically proven that any speciication whose semantic meaning can be formalized can be also expressed by a sketch. Unifying power. Many of graphical speciication languages can be simulated by sketches in the corresponding signature of diagram markers. Semantic capabilities. The sketch language is inherently object-oriented and provides a quite natural way of specifying OO class-reference schemas. Easy and exible modularization mechanism. A complex speciication can be presented by a sketch whose nodes are sketches and arrows are sketch mappings, this patterns can be reiterated if necessary. So, such sketch speciications enjoy a unique combination of rigor, expressiveness and comprehensibility. They can be used for data modeling, process modeling and metadata modeling as well thus providing a uniied speciication framework for the entire eld of software engineering. An important observation we made while applying sketches is that in a concrete application domain sketches normally appear as a precise formal reenement of the existing notation rather than an external imposition upon the domain. In particular, sketches can be seen as a far reaching generalization of FDM-schemas and ER-diagrams in semantic modeling, interaction diagrams in process modeling, schema grids in metadata modeling.