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Experience with Z developing a control program for a radiation therapy machine

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ZUM '97: The Z Formal Specification Notation (ZUM 1997)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1212))

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Abstract

We are developing a control program for a unique radiation therapy machine. The program is safety-critical, executes several concurrent tasks, and must meet real-time deadlines. Development employs both formal and traditional methods: we produce an informal specification in prose (supplemented by tables, diagrams and a few formulas) and a formal description in Z. The Z description includes an abstract level that expresses overall safety requirements and a concrete level that serves as a detailed design, where Z paragraphs correspond to data structures, functions and procedures in the code. We validate the Z texts against the prose specification by inspection. We derive most of the code from the Z texts by intuition and verify it by inspection but a small amount of code is derived and verified more formally. We have produced about 250 pages of informal specification and design description, about 1200 lines of Z and about 6000 lines of code. Experiences developing a large Z specification and writing the program are reported, and some errors we discovered and corrected are described.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Radiation Oncology, University of Washington, Box 356043, 98195-6043, Seattle, WA

    Jonathan Jacky, Jonathan Unger, Michael Patrick, David Reid & Ruedi Risler

Authors
  1. Jonathan Jacky
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  2. Jonathan Unger
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  3. Michael Patrick
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  4. David Reid
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  5. Ruedi Risler
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Editor information

Jonathan P. Bowen Michael G. Hinchey David Till

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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Jacky, J., Unger, J., Patrick, M., Reid, D., Risler, R. (1997). Experience with Z developing a control program for a radiation therapy machine. In: Bowen, J.P., Hinchey, M.G., Till, D. (eds) ZUM '97: The Z Formal Specification Notation. ZUM 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1212. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0027295

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0027295

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-62717-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68490-9

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