Introducing extra operations in refinement

Boiten, Eerke Albert

doi:10.1007/s00165-012-0266-z

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The second case in particular relates to "refining skip", which serves a variety of roles in different formal methods, sometimes causing significant problems. We have analysed this previously [9,10] and called the second case a "perspicuous" operation. At the more abstract level, the operation has no visible effect; but a refinement might provide some behaviour at a greater level of detail.…”

Section: Definition 1 (Csmat)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding, Explaining, and Deriving Refinement

Boiten

Derrick

2019

From Astrophysics to Unconventional Computation

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Much of what drove us in over twenty years of research in refinement, starting with Z in particular, was the desire to understand where refinement rules came from. The relational model of refinement provided a solid starting point which allowed the derivation of Z refinement rules. Not only did this explain and verify the existing rules-more importantly, it also allowed alternative derivations for different and generalised notions of refinement. In this chapter, we briefly describe the context of our early efforts in this area and Susan Stepney's role in this, before moving on to the motivation and exploration of a recently developed primitive model of refinement: concrete state machines with anonymous transitions. 1 Introduction: Z Refinement Theories of the Late 1990s At the Formal Methods Europe conference at Oxford in 1996 [20], there was a reception to celebrate the launch of Jim and Jim's (Woodcock and Davies) book on Understanding Z [30]. This was a fascinatingly different book on Z for those with a firm interest in Z refinement like ourselves, one as aspirational and inspirational as the slightly earlier "Z in Practice" [5]. It contained a full derivation of the downward simulation rules for states-and-operations specifications, with inputs and outputs, all the way from Hoare, He and Sanders' relational refinement rules [22], with the punny "relaxing" and "unwinding" important steps of the derivation process. In addition, unlike most Z textbooks, it also included upward simulation rules to achieve completeness-we were told that these had turned out to be necessary in an exciting but mostly confidential industry project called "Mondex" [29]. There was

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Section: Definition 1 (Csmat)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding, Explaining, and Deriving Refinement

Boiten

Derrick

2019

From Astrophysics to Unconventional Computation

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“…There are also some minor differences in the other observation models (failures, divergences) such that ASTD allows definition of extra operations during refinement (see [13] for a more detailed comparison between CSP and ASTD refinements). Several work [8,25,4] deal with the consequences of the introduction of extra operations on the CSP, B or Z refinement semantics. Compatibility in such couplings requires observations on the input/output operations in the models used for refinement.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An embedding of one language into the other one then ensures the consistency of the whole model. Recent work [21,18,25,4] try either to define a formal language with a unifying semantics, or to define proof obligations generation rules for showing in which conditions one piece of specification can be refined without introducing inconsistencies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal refinement of extended state machines

Fayolle¹,

Frappier

Laleau³

et al. 2016

Electron. Proc. Theor. Comput. Sci.

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In a traditional formal development process, e.g. using the B method, the informal user requirements are (manually) translated into a global abstract formal specification. This translation is especially difficult to achieve. The Event-B method was developed to incrementally and formally construct such a specification using stepwise refinement. Each increment takes into account new properties and system aspects. In this paper, we propose to couple a graphical notation called Algebraic State-Transition Diagrams (ASTD) with an Event-B specification in order to provide a better understanding of the software behaviour. The dynamic behaviour is captured by the ASTD, which is based on automata and process algebra operators, while the data model is described by means of an Event-B specification. We propose a methodology to incrementally refine such specification couplings, taking into account new refinement relations and consistency conditions between the control specification and the data specification. We compare the specifications obtained using each approach for readability and proof complexity. The advantages and drawbacks of the traditional approach and of our methodology are discussed. The whole process is illustrated by a railway CBTC-like case study. Our approach is supported by tools for translating ASTD's into B and Event-B into B.

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“…But refinements of UML or SysML models often include the replacement of a single abstract operation by a sequence of refined operations (also known as non-atomic refinement [23]). In order to formalize this, we need a more flexible relation.…”

Section: Theoretical Foundationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic Refinement Checking for Formal System Models

Seiter

Wille

Kühne

et al. 2015

Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering

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Abstract-For the design of complex systems, formal modeling languages such as UML or SysML find significant attention. The typical model-driven design flow assumes thereby an initial (abstract) model which is iteratively refined to a more precise description. During this process, new errors and inconsistencies might be introduced. In this paper, we propose an automatic method for verifying the consistency of refinements in UML or SysML. For this purpose, a theoretical foundation is considered from which the corresponding proof obligations are determined. Afterwards, they are encoded as an instance of Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) and solved using proper solving engines. The practical use of the proposed method is demonstrated and compared to a previously proposed approach.

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Introducing extra operations in refinement

Cited by 12 publications

References 31 publications

Understanding, Explaining, and Deriving Refinement

Understanding, Explaining, and Deriving Refinement

Formal refinement of extended state machines

Automatic Refinement Checking for Formal System Models

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