Abstract State Machines 1988-1998: Commented ASM Bibliography

An annotated bibliography of papers which deal with or use Abstract State Machines (ASMs), as of January 1998.Comment: Also maintained as a BibTeX file at http://www.eecs.umich.edu/gasm

formal aspects of and development environments for montages

The specification of all aspects of a programming language requires adequate formal models and tool support. Montages specifications combine graphical and textual elements to yield language descriptions similar in structure, length, and complexity to those in common language manuals, but with a formal semantics. A broad range of people involved in programming language design and use may find it convenient to use Montages in combination with the tool GEM-MEX. It allows the automatic generation of high-quality documents, type-checkers, interpreters and symbolic debuggers

KIV zur Verifikation von ASM-Spezifikationen am Beispiel der DLX-Pipelining Architektur

In der hier beschriebenen Fallstudie wurde das KIV-System (Karlsruhe Interactive Verifier) zur Verifikation von ASM-Spezifikationen (Abstract State Machines) eingesetzt. Diese Fallstudie behandelt die von Boerger & Mazzanti aufbereitete Verifikation der DLX-Pipelining-Architektur. Wir geben Details der formalen Spezifikation und Verifikation mit KIV, schaetzen den damit verbundenen Arbeitsaufwand ab und skizzieren kleinere Unzulaenglichkeiten der informellen Verifikation, welche durch die Formalisierung aufgedeckt werden konnten. Zudem wird von einer Erweiterung des KIV-Systems um zwei neue Beweistaktiken berichtet, welche speziell auf die effiziente Verifikation von ASM-Spezifikationen zugeschnitten sind. Diese wurden im Rahmen der hier behandelten Fallstudie erarbeitet, implementiert und eingesetz

Formal design of data warehouse and OLAP systems : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Systems at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

A data warehouse is a single data store, where data from multiple data sources is integrated for online business analytical processing (OLAP) of an entire organisation. The rationale being single and integrated is to ensure a consistent view of the organisational business performance independent from different angels of business perspectives. Due to its wide coverage of subjects, data warehouse design is a highly complex, lengthy and error-prone process. Furthermore, the business analytical tasks change over time, which results in changes in the requirements for the OLAP systems. Thus, data warehouse and OLAP systems are rather dynamic and the design process is continuous. In this thesis, we propose a method that is integrated, formal and application-tailored to overcome the complexity problem, deal with the system dynamics, improve the quality of the system and the chance of success. Our method comprises three important parts: the general ASMs method with types, the application tailored design framework for data warehouse and OLAP, and the schema integration method with a set of provably correct refinement rules. By using the ASM method, we are able to model both data and operations in a uniform conceptual framework, which enables us to design an integrated approach for data warehouse and OLAP design. The freedom given by the ASM method allows us to model the system at an abstract level that is easy to understand for both users and designers. More specifically, the language allows us to use the terms from the user domain not biased by the terms used in computer systems. The pseudo-code like transition rules, which gives the simplest form of operational semantics in ASMs, give the closeness to programming languages for designers to understand. Furthermore, these rules are rooted in mathematics to assist in improving the quality of the system design. By extending the ASMs with types, the modelling language is tailored for data warehouse with the terms that are well developed for data-intensive applications, which makes it easy to model the schema evolution as refinements in the dynamic data warehouse design. By providing the application-tailored design framework, we break down the design complexity by business processes (also called subjects in data warehousing) and design concerns. By designing the data warehouse by subjects, our method resembles Kimball's "bottom-up" approach. However, with the schema integration method, our method resolves the stovepipe issue of the approach. By building up a data warehouse iteratively in an integrated framework, our method not only results in an integrated data warehouse, but also resolves the issues of complexity and delayed ROI (Return On Investment) in Inmon's "top-down" approach. By dealing with the user change requests in the same way as new subjects, and modelling data and operations explicitly in a three-tier architecture, namely the data sources, the data warehouse and the OLAP (online Analytical Processing), our method facilitates dynamic design with system integrity. By introducing a notion of refinement specific to schema evolution, namely schema refinement, for capturing the notion of schema dominance in schema integration, we are able to build a set of correctness-proven refinement rules. By providing the set of refinement rules, we simplify the designers's work in correctness design verification. Nevertheless, we do not aim for a complete set due to the fact that there are many different ways for schema integration, and neither a prescribed way of integration to allow designer favored design. Furthermore, given its °exibility in the process, our method can be extended for new emerging design issues easily

Why use evolving algebras for hardware and software engineering?

In this paper I answer the question how evolving algebras can be used for the design and analysis of complex hardware and software systems. I present the salient features of this new method and illustrate them through several examples from my work on specification and verification of programming languages, compilers, protocols and architectures. The definition of a mathematical model for Hennessy and Patterson's RISC architecture DLX serves as a running example; this model is used in [24] to prove the correctness of instruction pipelining. I will point out the yet unexplored potential of the evolving algebra method for large-scale industrial applications