CASL for CafeOBJ Users

Casl is an expressive language for the algebraic specificationof software requirements, design, and architecture. It has been developed by an open collaborative effort called CoFI (Common Framework Initiative for algebraic specification and development). Casl combines the best features of many previous main-stream algebraic specification languages, and it should provide a focus for future research and development in the use of algebraic techniques, as well facilitating interoperability ofexisting and future tools. This paper presents Casl for users of the CafeOBJ framework, focusing on the relationship between the two languages. It first considers those constructs of CafeOBJ that have direct counterparts in Casl, and then (briefly) those that do not. It also motivates various Casl constructsthat are not provided by CafeOBJ. Finally, it gives a concise overview of Casl, and illustrates how some CafeOBJ specifications may be expressed in Casl

Property preserving development and testing for CSP-CASL.

This thesis describes a theoretical study and an industrial application in the area of formal systems development, verification and formal testing using the specification language CSP-CASL. The latter is a comprehensive specification language which allows to describe systems in a combined algebraic / process algebraic notation. To this end it integrates the process algebra CSP and the algebraic specification language CASL. In this thesis we propose various formal development notions for CSP-CASL capable of capturing informal vertical and horizontal software development which we typically find in industrial applications. We provide proof techniques for such development notions and verification methodologies to prove interesting properties of reactive systems. We also propose a theoretical framework for formal testing from CSP-CASL specifications. Here, we present a conformance relation between a physical system and a CSP-C ASL specification. In particular we study the relationship between CSP-CASL development notions and the implemented system. The proposed theoretical notions of formal system development, property verification and formal testing for CSP-CASL, have been successfully applied to two industrial application: an electronic payment system called EP2 and the starting system of the BR725 Rolls- Royce jet engine control software

Metamodel-based model conformance and multiview consistency checking

Model-driven development, using languages such as UML and BON, often makes use of multiple diagrams (e.g., class and sequence diagrams) when modeling systems. These diagrams, presenting different views of a system of interest, may be inconsistent. A metamodel provides a unifying framework in which to ensure and check consistency, while at the same time providing the means to distinguish between valid and invalid models, that is, conformance. Two formal specifications of the metamodel for an object-oriented modeling language are presented, and it is shown how to use these specifications for model conformance and multiview consistency checking. Comparisons are made in terms of completeness and the level of automation each provide for checking multiview consistency and model conformance. The lessons learned from applying formal techniques to the problems of metamodeling, model conformance, and multiview consistency checking are summarized

Equality to equals and unequals: a revisit of the equivalence and nonequivalence criteria in object-oriented software testing

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On the whereabouts of CSP-CASL – A survey

CSP-CASL is but one of the many languages for which Bernd Krieg-Brueckner (BKB) had a great deal of influence throughout its development process: from the initial idea of working towards an integration of the process algebra CSP with the algebraic specification language CASL, to the design of the concrete syntax, and also to tool support for CSP-CASL, where the theorem prover Isabelle should provide the common platform. In all this, BKB provided inspiration and guidance, funding, and also a helping hand when needed. This paper provides a survey on the technology developed so far for CSP-CASL, covering results of a theoretical nature, an industrial case study, theorem proving support as well as a testing approach. In honour of BKB’s 60th birthday, this survey documents what has become out of one of BKB’s visions

Using formal methods to support testing

Formal methods and testing are two important approaches that assist in the development of high quality software. While traditionally these approaches have been seen as rivals, in recent years a new consensus has developed in which they are seen as complementary. This article reviews the state of the art regarding ways in which the presence of a formal specification can be used to assist testing

Tool support for CSP-CASL.

This work presents the design of the specification language CSP-CASL, and the design and implementation of parsing and static analysis tools for that language. CSP-CASL is an extension of the algebraic specification language CASL, adding support for the specification of reactive systems in the style of the process algebra CSP. While CSP-CASL has been described and used in previous works, we present the first formal description of the language's syntax and static semantics. Indeed, this is the first formalisation of the static semantics of any CSP-like language of which we are aware. We describe Csp-Casl both informally and formally. We introduce and systematically describe its various components, with examples, and consider various design decisions made along the way. On the formal side, we present grammars for its abstract and concrete syntax, specify its static semantics in the style of natural semantics, and formulate a solution to the problem of computation of local lop elements of Csp-Casl specifications. Going on, we describe tool support for the language, as implemented using the functional programming language Haskell, in particular, we have a parser utilising the monadic combinator library Parsec, and a static analyser directly implementing our static semantics in Haskell. The implementation extends Hets, an existing toolset for specifications written in heterogeneous combinations of languages based on Casl

Testing data types implementations from algebraic specifications

Algebraic specifications of data types provide a natural basis for testing data types implementations. In this framework, the conformance relation is based on the satisfaction of axioms. This makes it possible to formally state the fundamental concepts of testing: exhaustive test set, testability hypotheses, oracle. Various criteria for selecting finite test sets have been proposed. They depend on the form of the axioms, and on the possibilities of observation of the implementation under test. This last point is related to the well-known oracle problem. As the main interest of algebraic specifications is data type abstraction, testing a concrete implementation raises the issue of the gap between the abstract description and the concrete representation. The observational semantics of algebraic specifications bring solutions on the basis of the so-called observable contexts. After a description of testing methods based on algebraic specifications, the chapter gives a brief presentation of some tools and case studies, and presents some applications to other formal methods involving datatypes