Towards a Formalism-Based Toolkit for Automotive Applications

The success of a number of projects has been shown to be significantly improved by the use of a formalism. However, there remains an open issue: to what extent can a development process based on a singular formal notation and method succeed. The majority of approaches demonstrate a low level of flexibility by attempting to use a single notation to express all of the different aspects encountered in software development. Often, these approaches leave a number of scalability issues open. We prefer a more eclectic approach. In our experience, the use of a formalism-based toolkit with adequate notations for each development phase is a viable solution. Following this principle, any specific notation is used only where and when it is really suitable and not necessarily over the entire software lifecycle. The approach explored in this article is perhaps slowly emerging in practice - we hope to accelerate its adoption. However, the major challenge is still finding the best way to instantiate it for each specific application scenario. In this work, we describe a development process and method for automotive applications which consists of five phases. The process recognizes the need for having adequate (and tailored) notations (Problem Frames, Requirements State Machine Language, and Event-B) for each development phase as well as direct traceability between the documents produced during each phase. This allows for a stepwise verification/validation of the system under development. The ideas for the formal development method have evolved over two significant case studies carried out in the DEPLOY project

Object orientation without extending Z

The good news of this paper is that without extending Z, we can elegantly specify object-oriented systems, including encapsulation, inheritance and subtype polymorphism (dynamic dispatch). The bad news is that this specification style is rather different to normal Z specifications, more abstract and axiomatic, which means that it is not so well supported by current Z tools such as animators. It also enforces behavioural subtyping, unlike most object-oriented programming languages. This paper explains the proposed style, with examples, and discusses its advantages and disadvantages

Facilitating modular property-preserving extensions of programming languages

We will explore an approach to modular programming language descriptions and extensions in a denotational style. Based on a language core, language features are added stepwise on the core. Language features can be described separated from each other in a self-contained, orthogonal way. We present an extension semantics framework consisting of mechanisms to adapt semantics of a basic language to new structural requirements in an extended language preserving the behaviour of programs of the basic language. Common templates of extension are provided. These can be collected in extension libraries accessible to and extendible by language designers. Mechanisms to extend these libraries are provided. A notation for describing language features embedding these semantics extensions is presented

Strategic term rewriting and its application to a VDM-SL to SQL conversion

We constructed a tool, called VooDooM, which converts datatypes in Vdm-sl into Sql relational data models. The conversion involves transformation of algebraic types to maps and products, and pointer introduction. The conversion is specified as a theory of refinement by calculation. The implementation technology is strategic term rewriting in Haskell, as supported by the Strafunski bundle. Due to these choices of theory and technology, the road from theory to practise is straightforward.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - POSI/ICHS/44304/2002Agência de Inovação (ADI) - ∑!223