Compositional class refinement in object-z

  • Authors:

  • Tim McComb;Graeme Smith

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland;School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland

  • Venue:
  • FM'06 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Formal Methods
  • Year:
  • 2006

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Object-Z allows coupling constraints between classes which, on the one hand, facilitate specification at a high level of abstraction, but, on the other hand, make class refinement non-compositional. The consequence of this is that refinement is not practical for large systems. This paper overcomes this limitation by introducing a methodology for compositional class refinement in Object-Z. The key step is an equivalence transformation of an arbitrary Object-Z specification to one in which introduced constraints prohibit non-compositional refinements. The methodology also allows the constraints which couple classes to be refined yielding an unrestricted approach to compositional class refinement.