Abstract
One of the useful features of the Z notation is that it offers a calculus for building large specifications from smaller components. So far most Z specifications have followed a single paradigm in which the system as a whole is treated as a state machine and parts of the specification define parts of the state and operations on these parts. A more recent paradigm for system structuring is the object-oriented approach, in which the system is divided into objects each of which has its own set of operations. We have built a system based on the object-oriented approach and we have used Z to specify it. This paper reports on the methods we used to develop an object-oriented Z specification, defines some extensions to the Z library which we developed and suggests some conventions and extensions which would help to make such specifications more straightforward.
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© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Hall, A. (1990). Using Z as a specification calculus for object-oriented systems. In: Bjørner, D., Hoare, C.A.R., Langmaack, H. (eds) VDM '90 VDM and Z — Formal Methods in Software Development. VDM 1990. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 428. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-52513-0_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-52513-0_16
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