Standards and techniques for object-oriented formal specification

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the significance and application of object-oriented formal specification languages to general software engineering projects and particularly to safety-critical and mission-critical systems. We consider the role fhat standardisation of such languages could play in promoting their eflective uptake. We give syntactic and semantic details of two objectoriented specification languages: Object-Z and .@+, and of the object-based specification language B. Aspects of these languages will be considered as inputs to an eventual standard framework for such languages. These languages have been used for a wide variety of systems, from data-processing to artificial intelligence and communicafion protocols. In this paper we give simple examples of specifications in these languages to support a comparative evaluation.

Formal specification of managed objects in an object-oriented network management system using Object-Z

“…[6], and has been used to describe objects in telecommunication [SI and distributed systems[7]. The general structure of an Object-Z class and a brief description of the major components follows [9]:…”