A survey on formal, object-oriented program development approaches

作者：Najafi M; Haghighi H^*; Nasab T Zohdi

来源：Scientia Iranica, 2015, 22(3): 1001-1017.

• Formal program development
• Object-orientation
• Formal specification
• Object-Z
• VDM
• VDM plus
• B
• Event-B
• UML-B

Due to the popularity of object-oriented programming approaches, there is a growing interest in utilizing object-oriented concepts, such as encapsulation and reuse, when applying formal methods. The main contribution of this paper is to review and compare existing formal methods to develop object-oriented programs from formal specifications. The secondary contribution is providing a comparison between widely used object-oriented formal specification languages. The results of this paper can be utilized by researchers wishing to know what open problems are outstanding in the areas of formal, object-oriented specification and program development. Our findings are also useful for those who are looking for proper specification languages and program development methods to specify and develop object-oriented programs formally. In addition, the provided criteria are suitable for evaluating numerous object-oriented formal specification languages that are under development, either by extending existing formal approaches or formalizing informal OO-methods. As one consequence of this work, it can be mentioned that among formal specification languages, OZ and VDM++ support 00 concepts more strongly in comparison to VDM++ and UML-B. Program development methods based on OZ have less tool support. Finally, most proposed methods for formal, object-oriented program development have been evaluated using only case studies, rather than employing formal approaches.

• 出版日期2015-6