Abstract Data Types in Event-B - An Application of Generic Instantiation

Integrating formal methods into industrial practice is a challenging task. Often, different kinds of expertise are required within the same development. On the one hand, there are domain engineers who have specific knowledge of the system under development. On the other hand, there are formal methods experts who have experience in rigorously specifying and reasoning about formal systems. Coordination between these groups is important for taking advantage of their expertise. In this paper, we describe our approach of using generic instantiation to facilitate this coordination. In particular, generic instantiation enables a separation of concerns between the different parties involved in developing formal systems.Comment: In Proceedings of DS-Event-B 2012: Workshop on the experience of and advances in developing dependable systems in Event-B, in conjunction with ICFEM 2012 - Kyoto, Japan, November 13, 201

Analysis and synthesis of abstract data types through generalization from examples

The discovery of general patterns of behavior from a set of input/output examples can be a useful technique in the automated analysis and synthesis of software systems. These generalized descriptions of the behavior form a set of assertions which can be used for validation, program synthesis, program testing, and run-time monitoring. Describing the behavior is characterized as a learning process in which the set of inputs is mapped into an appropriate transform space such that general patterns can be easily characterized. The learning algorithm must chose a transform function and define a subset of the transform space which is related to equivalence classes of behavior in the original domain. An algorithm for analyzing the behavior of abstract data types is presented and several examples are given. The use of the analysis for purposes of program synthesis is also discussed

Identifying reusable abstract data types in code

The basic aim of this thesis is to analyse the state of the art in the field of the software reuse Software reuse is widely regarded as offering the opportunity for improving the software production process. It is expected that a massive increase in software reuse is the most promising way of overcoming the software crisis. It can lead to substantial increases in productivity and also to software systems which are more robust and more reliable. A Reuse Re-engineering process together with techniques from reverse engineering represent a method to achieve software reuse. A reference paradigm is established to implement the Reuse Re-engineering process. The reference paradigm is composed of five sequential phases, each characterised by the object it produces. This thesis deals mainly with the first phase of the reference paradigm. This phase is called Candidature and it is concerned with the analysis of the source code for the identification of sets of software components that can be candidate to make up a reusable component. Various methods involved in this phase exist in the literature. Each of them has different characteristic and different qualities. One of these approaches is analysed and it is extended in the new method to give a more precise set of reusable abstract data types. In this thesis the new method is presented. A formalisation followed by implementation of it and an evaluation of its quality through quality attributes is given