Applying formal methods to standard development: the open distributed processing experience

Since their introduction, formal methods have been applied in various ways to different standards. This paper gives an account of these applications, focusing on one application in particular: the development of a framework for creating standards for Open Distributed Processing (ODP). Following an introduction to ODP, the paper gives an insight into the current work on formalising the architecture of the Reference Model of ODP (RM-ODP), highlighting the advantages to be gained. The different approaches currently being taken are shown, together with their associated advantages and disadvantages. The paper concludes that there is no one all-purpose approach which can be used in preference to all others, but that a combination of approaches is desirable to best fulfil the potential of formal methods in developing an architectural semantics for OD

Feature refinement

Development by formal stepwise refinement offers a guarantee that an implementation satisfies a specification. But refinement is frequently defined in such a restrictive way as to disallow some useful development steps. Here we de- fine feature refinement to overcome some limitations of re- finement and show its usefulness by applying it to examples taken from the literature. Using partial relations as a canonical state-based semantics and labelled transition systems as a canonical event-based semantics, we degine functions formally linking the state- and event-based operational semantics. We can then use this link to move notions of refinement between the event- and state-based worlds. An advantage of this abstract approach is that it is not restricted to a specific syntax or even a specific interpretation of the operational semantic

A note on two notions of compliance

We establish a relation between two models of contracts: binary session types, and a model based on event structures and game-theoretic notions. In particular, we show that compliance in session types corresponds to the existence of certain winning strategies in game-based contracts.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2014, arXiv:1410.701

Contexts, refinement and determinism

In this paper we have been influenced by those who take an “engineering view” of the problem of designing systems, i.e. a view that is motivated by what someone designing a real system will be concerned with, and what questions will arise as they work on their design. Specifically, we have borrowed from the testing work of Hennessy, de Nicola and van Glabbeek, e.g. [13, 5, 21, 40, 39]. Here we concentrate on one fundamental part of the engineering view and where consideration of it leads. The aspects we are concerned with are computational entities in contexts, observed by users. This leads to formalising design steps that are often left informal, and that in turn gives insights into non-determinism and ultimately leads to being able to use refinement in situations where existing techniques fail