Abstract
This paper examines work in the Systems and Software Engineering Division at British Telecom Research Laboratories which uses functional languages as part of a formal lifecycle. The use of functional languages allows programs to be quickly produced from formal specifications, and then enables the resulting program to be transformed into a correct implementation that meets the speed and size constraints of the specification.
The paper gives a small but complete example of how an initial functional program can be created from a Z specification, and demonstrates that the run-time behaviour of this program means that it cannot possibly be the final implementation. This initial program is then formally transformed into a program whose run-time behaviour could be considered acceptable.
The main advantage of this approach is that the engineer is working in an executable design language. This allows the benefits that are normally associated with prototyping to be gained in addition to the benefits that are associated with formal specification and program development.
The paper concludes that the use of functional programming technology is a valuable tool for the systematic construction of programs with regard to their specification.
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© 1990 Springer-Verlag London
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Johnson, M., Sanders, P. (1990). From Z Specifications To Functional Implementations. In: Nicholls, J.E. (eds) Z User Workshop. Workshops in Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3877-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3877-8_6
Publisher Name: Springer, London
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