An algebraic construction of predicate transformers

Abstract

In this paper we present an algebraic construction of the category of monotonic predicate transformers from the category of relations which is similar to the standard algebraic construction of the integers from the natural numbers. The same construction yields the category of relations from the category of total functions. This provides a mechanism through which the rich type structure of the category of total functions can be promoted to successively weaker ones in the categories of relations and predicate transformers. In addition, it has exposed two complete rules for the refinement and composition of specifications in Morgan’s refinement calculus.