A formal model of the Semantic Web Service Ontology (WSMO)

Semantic Web Service, one of the most significant research areas within the Semantic Web vision, has attracted increasing attention from both the research community and industry. The Web Service Modelling Ontology (WSMO) has been proposed as an enabling framework for the total/partial automation of the tasks (e.g., discovery, selection, composition, mediation, execution, monitoring, etc.) involved in both intra- and inter-enterprise integration of Web services. To support the standardisation and tool support of WSMO, a formal model of the language is highly desirable. As several variants of WSMO have been proposed by the WSMO community, which are still under development, the syntax and semantics of WSMO should be formally defined to facilitate easy reuse and future development. In this paper, we present a formal Object-Z formal model of WSMO, where different aspects of the language have been precisely defined within one unified framework. This model not only provides a formal unambiguous model which can be used to develop tools and facilitate future development, but as demonstrated in this paper, can be used to identify and eliminate errors present in existing documentation.     

Integrating a formal method into a software engineering process with UML and Java

We describe how CSP-OZ, a formal method combining the process algebra CSP with the specification language Object-Z, can be integrated into an object-oriented software engineering process employing the UML as a modelling and Java as an implementation language. The benefit of this integration lies in the rigour of the formal method, which improves the precision of the constructed models and opens up the possibility of (1) verifying properties of models in the early design phases, and (2) checking adherence of implementations to models. The envisaged application area of our approach is the design of distributed reactive systems. To this end, we propose a specific UML profile for reactive systems. The profile contains facilities for modelling components, their interfaces and interconnections via synchronous/broadcast communication, and the overall architecture of a system. The integration with the formal method proceeds by generating a significant part of the CSP-OZ specification from the initially developed UML model. The formal specification is on the one hand the starting point for verifying properties of the model, for instance by using the FDR model checker. On the other hand, it is the basis for generating contracts for the final implementation. Contracts are written in the Java Modeling Language (JML) complemented by CSP_jassda, an assertion language for specifying orderings between method invocations. A set of tools for runtime checking can be used to supervise the adherence of the final Java implementation to the generated contracts. This research was partially supported by the DFG project ForMooS (grants OL 98/3-2 and WE 2290/5-1). C. B. Jones     

Deep Semantic Links of TCSP and Object-Z: TCOZ Approach

Formal methods can be used in effective combination only if the semantic links between individual methods are clearly established. This paper discusses the semantic design of TCOZ, a language blended from Object-Z and TCSP. The semantic model adopted is the infinite timed failures model of TCSP, extended to include initial state and update events for modelling operations on internal state. An infinite trace model has been used so as to ensure proper account is taken of the potentially unbounded non-determinism allowed by Z schemas. Received September 2000 / Accepted in revised form June 2001     

A singleton failures semantics for Communicating Sequential Processes

This paper defines a new denotational semantics for the language of Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP). The semantics lies between the existing traces and failures models of CSP, providing a treatment of non-determinism in terms of singleton failures. Although the semantics does not represent a congruence upon the full language, it is adequate for sequential tests of non-deterministic processes. This semantics corresponds exactly to a commonly used notion of data refinement in Z and Object-Z: an abstract data type is refined when the corresponding process is refined in terms of singleton failures. The semantics is used to explore the relationship between data refinement and process refinement, and to derive a rule for data refinement that is both sound and complete. Received October 2001 Revised September 2002, February 2003, June 2004 and October 2005 Accepted November 2005 by I. J. Hayes     

一种从Object—Z到CSP规格说明的转化方法

面向对象形式规格说明语言Object-Z与进程代数CSP相结合是当今的一个热点,它既可以表示复杂的模块化数据与算法,又可以表示系统的行为,但求精与验证对它们结合后的规格说明需要分别进行处理。本文提出了一个方法,把Object-Z规格说明转化为CSP规格说明,可以方便地处理结合后的规格说明,因此求精与推理对结合后的规格说明可以按CSP规则与方法一致来进行处理。此外,转化后的Object-Z规格说明可以按照CSP方法进行模型检查。     

Integrating object-oriented methods and formal methods for requirement engineering

High quality software requirement specification is crucial for a software development. Although much efforts and research works have been done to address the problem, the errors in user requirement are still prevent us from developing high quality software. To address the problem, this paper proposes integrating graphical specification technique UML with formal specification technique to construct user requirement specification. We also present a prototype tool to perform the automatic translation from UML specification into Object-Z specification.     

Structural Refinement of Systems Specified in Object-Z and CSP

This paper is concerned with methods for refinement of specifications written using a combination of Object-Z and CSP. Such a combination has proved to be a suitable vehicle for specifying complex systems which involve state and behaviour, and several proposals exist for integrating these two languages. The basis of the integration in this paper is a semantics of Object-Z classes identical to CSP processes. This allows classes specified in Object-Z to be combined using CSP operators. It has been shown that this semantic model allows state-based refinement relations to be used on the Object-Z components in an integrated Object-Z/CSP specification. However, the current refinement methodology does not allow the structure of a specification to be changed in a refinement, whereas a full methodology would, for example, allow concurrency to be introduced during the development life-cycle. In this paper, we tackle these concerns and discuss refinements of specifications written using Object-Z and CSP where we change the structure of the specification when performing the refinement. In particular, we develop a set of structural simulation rules which allow single components to be refined to more complex specifications involving CSP operators. The soundness of these rules is verified against the common semantic model and they are illustrated via a number of examples.     

一种在Internet环境下提交与发布Z规格说明的方法

用形式方法开发软件可提高软件系统的正确性和可靠性，并可提高软件开发的效率。Z是一种基于状态的形式规格说明语言。但是一直以来形式方法在工业上不能得到普遍的应用，一个原因是它缺乏有效的支持工具以及向通用的工业标准转化的连接。本文首先用JAVA语言和XML开发了一种方法，使得用户能够在不同的平台上、不同的浏览器上利用GUI的方式编辑Z规格说明，进而转化成服务器端的以XML方式描述的Z模式。通过XSL所定义的格式，又将以XML方式描述的Z发布到网页上。从而实现了Z规格说明在WWW环境下的共享与发布。