Abstract
A benchmark real-time problem, the generalised railroad crossing [9], serves as illustration of a fully graphical approach to the formal development of correct reactive real-time systems. We show how to formally capture requirements with the graphical language Constraint Diagrams [6] and perform graphical refinement steps towards implementable requirements. These requirements correspond directly to PLC-Automata [4], a class of real-time automata suitable to describe the behaviour of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), a hardware widely used in industry in order to control processes. A compilation schema generates runnable PLC-source-code. Optionally; error states can be introduced in the automata to allow checks of correctness of assumptions. While all languages used — except for the PLC-source-code — are visual, their common semantics is formally defined employing Duration Calculus (DC) [20]. Correctness of refinement steps can thus be formally proven. Once established, graphical refinement rules can be used without knowledge of the DC inside. In that way visuality eases application of formal reasoning.
This research was partially supported by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the project UniForM under grant No. FKZ 01 IS 521 B3
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Dierks, H., Dietz, C. (1997). Graphical specification and reasoning: Case study generalised railroad crossing. In: Fitzgerald, J., Jones, C.B., Lucas, P. (eds) FME '97: Industrial Applications and Strengthened Foundations of Formal Methods. FME 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1313. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63533-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63533-5_2
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