Experiences with Combining Formalisms in VVSL

This paper primarily reports on semantic aspects of how a formal specification of the PCTE interfaces has been achieved in a situation where only a combination of existing formalisms could meet the needs. The motivations for combining a VDM specification language with a language of temporal logic, for translating the resulting language, called VVSL, to an extended COLD-K and for translating it also (partially) to the language of the logic MPL! are briefly outlined. The main experiences from this work on combination and transformation of formalisms are presented. Some important experiences with the application of VVSL to the formal specification of the PCTE interfaces and otherwise are also mentioned. Keywords & Phrases: formal specification languages, model-oriented specification, pre- and post-conditions, inter-conditions, temporal logic, transformational semantics, logical semantics. 1987 CR Categories: D.2.1, D.2.2, D.3.1, F.3.1, F.3.2, F.4.1 1 Introduction A large software syst..