Integrating BON and Object-Z.

A significant limitation with object-oriented formal specification languages, such as Object-Z, is that they lack development and management processes, which can be used to guide the production of reliable, robust object-oriented systems. An integration of an object-oriented methodology, BON, and Object-Z is presented in order to add an industrially validated development process to Object-Z. An extensible CASE tool for BON is also described that supports the integration with an Object-Z code generation engine

From specification through refinement to implementation : a comparative study

This dissertation investigates the role of specification, refinement and implementation in the software development cycle. Both the structured and object-oriented paradigms are looked at. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of the refinement process. The requirements for the product (system) are determined, the specifications are drawn up, the product is designed, specified, implemented and tested. The stage between the (formal) specification of the system and the implementation of the system is the refinement stage. The refinement process consists out of data refinement, operation refinement, and operation decomposition. In this dissertation, Z, Object-Z and UML (Unified Modelling Language) are used as specification languages and C, C++, Cobol and Object-Oriented Cobol are used as implementation languages. As an illustration a small system, The ITEM System, is specified in Z and UML and implemented in Object-Oriented Cobol.ComputingM. Sc. (Information Systems

When Are Methods Complementary?

We address the issue of when software development methods are complementary, i.e., determining when a method is capable of a task that another method cannot perform. Our intent is to examine complementarity in order to help determine when to carry out method integration. We propose some factors for method complementarity, and suggest that contextdependent criteria, such as real-world domain and non-functional development requirements, may have a significant impact on method complementarity