Synopses & Reviews
Z is currently one of the more popular formal specification languages. Practical experience has shown, however, that the Z schema is insufficient to support the structuring of large specifications, and many attempts have been made to develop adequate extensions to it. One of the most promising avenues of research is the use of object orientation technology, which has great potential as a means of structuring large, complex software systems. This volume contains a collection of papers investigating different approaches for providing Z with an object oriented structuring mechanism. It evolved from a comparative study of ways in which object orientation has been combined with Z, which was carried out as part of the DTI/IED-funded ZIP Project. As a result of interest generated by the study last year at both the ZOOM Workshop in Oxford and the Sixth Annual Z User Meeting in York, it was revised and expanded into its present form. In each chapter a different approach is described and assessed. Among the topics covered are: Why an object oriented Z?; Example specifications in Z; Hall's style; Z expression of refinable objects; MooZ case studies; Object-Z: OOZE; Schuman and Pitt approach; Z++; ZEST; Specification in Fresco; Z and HOOD. Object Orientation in Z provides a unique comparative approach to this important area of research. It will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of formal methods and software systems design, as well as to commercial software researchers.
Synopsis
This collection of papers draws together a variety of approaches for adding ob ject orientation to the Z formal specification language. These papers are not a conference proceedings, but have a slightly more complicated his tory. This work has grown and evolved from some work originally done in the ZIP project, under the United Kingdom's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) IED initiative. ZIP is a three year project which aims to make the use of the Z specification language more widespread. It hopes to achieve this by producing a standard for Zj developing a method for Zj building tool support for Zj and carrying out research into refinement, proof and concurrency in Z. The ZIP methods work includes performing a survey of current Z practitioners (reported in Barden et al. 1992])j investigating current styles and methods of Z usagej and developing a Z Method handbook (available early in 1993). As part of this work, we carried out a comparative study of the ways in which object orientation has been combined with Z. A summary of that work has been published as Stepney et al. 1992]."