Data Reification Vs. Data Refinement
Data reification (stepwise refinement) involves finding a more concrete representation of the abstract data types used in a formal specification.
Data reification is the terminology of the Vienna Development Method (VDM) that most other people would call data refinement. An example is taking a step towards an implementation by replacing a data representation without a counterpart in the intended implementation language, such as sets, by one that does have a counterpart (such as maps with fixed domains that can be implemented by arrays), or at least one that is closer to having a counterpart, such as sequences. The VDM community prefers the word "reification" over "refinement", as the process has more to do with concretising an idea than with refining it.
For similar usages, see Reification (linguistics).
Read more about this topic: Reification (computer Science)
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