An approach to animate Object-Z specifications using C++

Abstract

Object-Z is an extension of the Z notation which facilitates specification of large, complex software by defining a system as a collection of independent classes. A number of contributions have been made so far to map Object-Z to various object-oriented languages. However, the given mapping approaches do not cover several Object-Z specification constructs, such as class union, object aggregation, object containment and some of the operation operators. Also, in much of the existing work, mapping rules are given in a very abstract form. In other words, they do not consider all cases in a detailed way needed to automate the mapping procedure. In our previous work, we partially tackled these issues; however, in this paper, we present a much more comprehensive way to animate Object-Z specifications using C++. The given method covers some constructs that have not been addressed in our previous work. Also, mapping rules are described with enough details facilitating automation. Finally, we consider some level of user interaction in our new method which increases the flexibility and efficiency of final codes from the user point of view.

From Object-Z Specification to Groovy Implementation

“…We have found more than 63 published papers on the development of object-oriented programs from formal speci cations, implying the importance of advances in this research eld. For example, there are 18 papers on animating formal speci cations; 11 papers used Object-Z [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]; seven used VDM and VDM++ [19][20][21][22][23][24][25] as the source speci cation languages. In addition, there are at least 32 works focusing on re nement of formal speci cations from which 10 approaches re ned Object-Z speci cations [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35], 5 methods applied VDM++ [36][37][38][39][40], and 17 papers were published for B, Event-B, and UML-B [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]…”

“…In [79], the work of [78] has been supported by presenting two new rules that consider a constructor for constant types and a template class for generic parameters. These mapping rules were later completed in [9] by covering more Object-Z structures, such as class union, object aggregation, object containment, and some of the operation operators. These mapping rules have been formally presented and proved in [80].…”

“…Although many of the weaknesses in the development of programs from object-oriented speci cations have been addressed [9,80], there are still unsolved problems. For example, multiple inheritance, generic de nitions, and parallel composition notions are not covered by these studies.…”

Generating Python Code from Object-Z Specifications

“…The formal languages Object-Z, VDM++, and UML-B are based on object-oriented styles which often mentioned in the literature. According to the comparison has been given in [1], the Object-Z has an important feature over other languages, which are: −Powerful semantic and calculus (predicate calculus and set theory) −strong support of objects −its specification style corresponds directly to object oriented programming constructs while UML-B weakly supports the concepts "object" and VDM++ does not have exact formal calculus.…”

“…There are many works that mapped Object-Z specifications to object oriented programming like C++ and Java, some presents a mapping method to cover some Object-Z constructs like basic type definition, schema, class, state schema, operation operators, state schema predicates. Types of constants, methods and template class [2], [3], [4], [5] and other works tried to complete these constructs such as all types of definitions, object aggregation, object containment and other operation operators [1].…”