CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor Examiners

Parametric polymorphism has become a common feature of mainstream programming languages, but software component architectures have lagged behind and do not sup-port this feature. The immediate consequence is that applications cannot naturally combine the functionality exposed by various parameterized modules, if it happens that the implementation language diers. This signicant problem surfaced rst and most acutely in the computer algebra community, where parametric polymorphism is heavily used for the specication and enforcement of the algebraic interfaces and in the implementation of algorithms that work over various coecient rings or elds. Com-plex, specialized mathematical libraries, servicing disjoint areas are implemented in various languages and therefore they cannot yet work together to attack increasingly dicult problems. This thesis examines the problem of accommodating parametric polymorphism, and related optimizations in a multi-language, distributed setting. We report on a rst experiment, where we developed the Alma framework that allows Aldor libraries to extend Maple in a eective and natural way, and constitute