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The present volume is the third in a series of VDM Symposia Proceedings. VDM, the Vienna Development Method, is a formal method for software engineering, Z refers to Zermelo, a mathematician whose name is associated with set theory. Many computing science, programming and software engineering proceedings are published regularly. The ones by VDM Europe have the distinguished mark that they are concerned with bringing real theory to apply to real programming. In Europe, there is very much interest in methodology, semantics and techniques, that is, in understanding how we build and what it is that we are building. The papers of these proceedings basically fall into four major groups: Applications, Methodology, Formalisations, and Foundations. The Methodology group has been further subdivided into five areas: Specification Methodology, Design Methodology, Modularity, Object Orientedness, and Processes, Concurrency and Distributed Systems.
List of contents
Object orientation and formal techniques.- An algebraic approach to refinement.- Modal logic programming.- Z specification of an object manager.- Correctness in the small.- A formal approach to hypertext using post-prototype formal specification.- Programming with VDM domains.- A buffering system implementation using VDM.- Formal specifications as reusable frameworks.- Z and the refinement calculus.- Modularizing the formal description of a database system.- Modular extensions to Z.- Adding abstract datatypes to Meta-IV.- Towards a semantics for object-Z.- HOOD and Z for the development of complex software systems.- Using Z as a specification calculus for object-oriented systems.- Specifying open distributed systems with Z.- Refinement of state-based concurrent systems.- Refining data to processes.- Two approaches towards the formalisation of VDM.- Type checking BSI/VDM-SL.- Type inference in Z.- Recursive definitions revisited.- Towards the semantics of the definitional language of MetaSoft.- On conservative extensions of syntax in the process of system development.- A formal semantics for Z and the link between Z and the relational algebra.- A naive domain universe for VDM.
