Combining VDM with executable code

  • Authors:

  • Claus Ballegaard Nielsen;Kenneth Lausdahl;Peter Gorm Larsen

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Engineering, Aarhus University, Aarhus N, Denmark;Department of Engineering, Aarhus University, Aarhus N, Denmark;Department of Engineering, Aarhus University, Aarhus N, Denmark

  • Venue:
  • ABZ'12 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Abstract State Machines, Alloy, B, VDM, and Z
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Formal methods have been used and successfully applied to a wide range of industrial applications for many years. However formal methods can be difficult to comprehend for outsiders and the link of formal models and external subsystems which are not modelled can be unclear. In this paper we present an approach which allows formal models to be more easily shared with external stakeholders and enables integration with external code. We demonstrate how an existing interpreter for an executable subset of VDM is extended enabling the combination of formal models with executable code. This eases the way in which a formal model can communicate with an external implementation or be used in graphical prototyping. A small case study is used to demonstrate how the approach can be utilized. In this paper the technique is used to combine VDM and Java, but the principles presented can be seen as a general approach for expanding the capabilities of formal modelling tools with interpretation capabilities.