Z Logic and Its Applications

Abstract

We provide an introduction to the specification language Z from a logical perspective. The possibility of presenting Z in this way is a consequence of a number of joint publications on Z logic that Henson and Reeves have co-written since 1997. We provide an informal as well as a formal introduction to Z logic and show how it may be used, and extended, to investigate issues such as equational logic, the logic of preconditions, operation and data refinement, and monotonicity.

Provably Correct Systems: Community, Connections, and Citations

“…These can be modelled using relations. The Z notation [21,35] is a convenient notation to present these formally, as previously demonstrated in [6]. Here we concentrate on authors rather than publications and the paths of coauthors that connect researchers.…”

Modelling user manuals of modal medical devices and learning from the experience

“…In this example where we are reverse-engineering an existing device we must necessarily use a manual process. For both the user manual and the pump we model the interactive components using presentation models and the underlying functionality as a Z specification [6,7,13]. We expect that the model of the manuals will be (necessarily) incomplete, as the level of detail given is typically less than a thorough description of total functionality of the device.…”

“…We use Z [6,7,13] to specify the functionality (rather than the interface) of the pump as understood from the manual also. We follow the usual Z format for a specification-we give a collection of operations (essentially one for each Sbehaviour) together with a state over which the operations work.…”

Combining Models for Interactive System Modelling

“…Typically, for us, this means creating a Z specification (ISO/IEC 13568, 2002;Henson et al, 2008) and/or µcharts (Reeve, 2005) to reason about functional and reactive behaviours, although any similar state-based notation could be substituted for Z. The ProZ component of the ProB tool 1 is used for model-checking the specification, or we can use Z theorem provers such as Proofpower 2 .…”