Semantics, Calculi, and Analysis for Object-oriented Specifications

By Achim D. Brucker and Burkhart Wolff.

We present a formal semantics for an object-oriented specification language. The formal semantics is presented as a conservative shallow embedding in Isabelle/HOL and the language is oriented towards OCL formulae in the context of UML class diagrams. On this basis, we formally derive several equational and tableaux calculi, which form the basis of an integrated proof environment including automatic proof support and support for the analysis of this type of specifications.

We show applications of our proof environment to data refinement based on an adapted standard refinement notion. Thus, we provide an integrated formal method for refinement-based object-oriented development.

Keywords:
UML, OCL, Object-Oriented Specification, Refinement, Formal Methods

Please cite this work as follows:
A. D. Brucker and B. Wolff, “Semantics, calculi, and analysis for object-oriented specifications,” Acta Informatica, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 255–284, Jul. 2009, doi: 10.1007/s00236-009-0093-8. Author copy: http://logicalhacking.com/publications/brucker.ea-semantics-2009/

BibTeX
@Article{ brucker.ea:semantics:2009,
  author    = {Achim D. Brucker and Burkhart Wolff},
  title     = {Semantics, Calculi, and Analysis for Object-oriented
               Specifications},
  journal   = {Acta Informatica },
  areas     = {formal methods, software},
  keywords  = {UML, OCL, Object-Oriented Specification, Refinement, Formal
               Methods},
  abstract  = {We present a formal semantics for an object-oriented
               specification language. The formal semantics is presented as a
               conservative shallow embedding in Isabelle/HOL and the
               language is oriented towards OCL formulae in the context of
               UML class diagrams. On this basis, we formally derive several
               equational and tableaux calculi, which form the basis of an
               integrated proof environment including automatic proof support
               and support for the analysis of this type of specifications.
               
               We show applications of our proof environment to data
               refinement based on an adapted standard refinement notion.
               Thus, we provide an integrated formal method for
               refinement-based object-oriented development.},
  year      = {2009},
  language  = {USenglish},
  issn      = {0001-5903},
  doi       = {10.1007/s00236-009-0093-8},
  pages     = {255--284},
  month     = {jul},
  volume    = {46},
  number    = {4},
  publisher = {Springer-Verlag },
  address   = {Heidelberg },
  note      = {Author copy: \url{http://logicalhacking.com/publications/brucker.ea-semantics-2009/}},
}