Frameworks Based on Templates for Rigorous Model-driven Development

Specifying Structural Properties and Their Constraints Formally, Visually and Modularly Using VCL

“…VCL is illustrated here with simple Bank case study, which is also used to illustrate the ZOO semantic domain in [15,5]. The case study's requirements are given in table 1.…”

“…The semantics of a VCL specification is the generated target language specification. This paper uses Z as target language and ZOO [15,5] as semantic domain. ZOO is an abstract OO semantic domain for language Z.…”

“…They do not suffer from the semantic-related problems of their semiformal counterparts. However, despite some success stories, formal methods have not been taken up by practitioners [10,5], being used only in the safety-critical niche [10]. Like others [2,11], we see in the visual and formal a promising combination to enhance the practicality and adoptability of formal techniques.…”

“…Although there have been successful formalisations of semantics for such languages (e.g subsets of UML, see [5]), they are mostly used without a formal semantics. The lack of formal semantics brings numerous problems [7]: (a) it is difficult to be precise and have a good sense of what is being specified, (b) models are prone to ambiguities and inconsistencies and (c) it is not possible to semantically analyse models mechanically.…”

“…The visual formalisms that most software engineers use, such as UML, are known as semi-formal methods [5,6]; semi-formal because they were designed to have a formal syntax, but no formal semantics. Although there have been successful formalisations of semantics for such languages (e.g subsets of UML, see [5]), they are mostly used without a formal semantics.…”