Concept Use or Concept Refinement: An Important Distinction in Building Generic Specifications

The Tecton concept description language provides constructs for building generic specifications incrementally, based mainly on the ability to use or refine concepts. This paper focuses on these constructs, the semantic distinctions between them, their role in determining the legality of concept instances, and their consequent role in motivating a certain style of specification. Differences in the legality conditions associated with instantiating a used or refined concept strongly motivate the specification writer toward a style in which concept use rather than refinement is favored.