The denotational approach developed for specifying semantics of programming languages is being applied to formally specify software systems. The role of Horn-logic and Constraints as a notation for specifying denotations is also being studied. Constraints allow one to model time, as well as automatically derive parallelizing compilers from language specifications. Language Syntax can also be very easily specified in Horn Logic. There are a number of papers written on applications of Horn Clause Denotations to various fields.
Work is still in progress on other applications.
This paper gives an overview of the whole approach. A. Karshmer, G. Gupta, S. Geiger, C. Weaver. G. Gupta, E. Pontelli. IEEE Real-time Symposium , San Francisco, pp. 1998 Joint International Conference and Symposium on Logic Programming , MIT Press, pp.