Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Automated translation of VDM to JML-annotated Java

  • Regular Paper
  • Published:
International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

When a system specified using the Vienna Development Method (VDM) is realised using code-generation, no guarantees are currently made about the correctness of the generated code. In this paper, we improve code-generation of VDM models by taking contract-based elements such as invariants and pre- and postconditions into account during the code-generation process. The contract-based elements of the Vienna Development Method Specification Language (VDM-SL) are translated into corresponding constructs in the Java Modelling Language (JML) and used to validate the generated code against the properties of the VDM model. VDM-SL and JML are both Design-by-Contract (DbC) languages, with the difference that VDM-SL supports abstract modelling and system specification, while JML is used for detailed specification of Java classes and interfaces. We describe the semantic differences between the contract-based elements of VDM-SL and JML and formulate the translation as a set of rules. We further demonstrate how dynamic JML assertion checks can be used to ensure the consistency of VDM’s subtypes when a model is code-generated. The translator is fully automated and produces JML-annotated Java programs that can be checked for correctness using JML tools.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. With the recent introduction of pure operations into VDM-10 (not to be confused with pure methods in JML), it has become possible to invoke operations, albeit pure ones, from a function. This feature was introduced to address issues with the object-oriented dialect of VDM, called VDM++, but was made available in every VDM-10 dialect (including VDM-SL).

  2. The generated code uses variables to represent the patterns (record pattern, tuple pattern, identifier pattern, etc.) introduced by use of pattern matching in VDM.

References

  1. Meyer, B.: Object-Oriented Software Construction. Prentice-Hall International, Upper Saddle River (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Bjørner, D., Jones, C. (eds.): The Vienna Development Method: The Meta-Language. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 61. Springer (1978)

  3. Fitzgerald, J., Larsen, P.G.: Modelling Systems—Practical Tools and Techniques in Software Development, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2009). doi:10.1017/CBO9780511626975

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Fitzgerald, J.S., Larsen, P.G., Verhoef, M.: Vienna Development Method. Wiley Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering. Wiley (2008)

  5. Woodcock, J., Davies, J.: Using Z—Specification, Refinement, and Proof. Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science. Hertfordshire, UK (1996)

  6. Jones, C.B.: Software Development A Rigorous Approach. Prentice-Hall International, Englewood Cliffs (1980)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Wing, J.M.: Writing Larch interface language specifications. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 9(1), 1–24 (1987). doi:10.1145/9758.10500

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. Burdy, L., Cheon, Y., Cok, D., Ernst, M.D., Kiniry, J.R., Leavens, G.T., Leino, K.R.M., Poll, E.: An overview of JML tools and applications. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. 7, 212–232 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Larsen, P.G., Battle, N., Ferreira, M., Fitzgerald, J., Lausdahl, K., Verhoef, M.: The overture initiative integrating tools for VDM. SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes 35(1), 1–6 (2010). doi:10.1145/1668862.1668864

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. The Overture tool website. http://overturetool.org/ (2015)

  11. Jørgensen, P.W.V., Couto, L.D., Larsen, M.: A code generation platform for VDM. In: Proceedings of the 12th Overture workshop (2014)

  12. Cok, D.: OpenJML: JML for Java 7 by Extending OpenJDK. In: Bobaru, M., Havelund, K., Holzmann, G., Joshi, R. (eds.) NASA Formal Methods. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6617, pp. 472–479. Springer, Berlin. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-20398-5_35(2011)

  13. Larsen, P.G., Lausdahl, K., Battle, N., Fitzgerald, J., Wolff, S., Sahara, S., Verhoef, M., Tran-Jørgensen, P.W.V., Oda, T., Chisholm, P.: The VDM-10 Language Manual. Tech. Rep. TR-2010-06, The Overture Open Source Initiative (2010)

  14. Andrews, D., Bruun, H., Damm, F., Dawes, J., Hansen, B., Larsen, P., Parkin, G., Plat, N., Totenel, H.: A Formal Definition of VDM-SL. Tech. Rep. 1998/9, Leicester University (1998)

  15. Lausdahl, K., Larsen, P.G., Battle, N.: A deterministic interpreter simulating a distributed real time system using VDM. In: Qin, S., Qiu, Z. (eds.) Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Formal methods and Software Engineering. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6991, pp. 179–194. Springer, Berlin. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-24559-6_14. ISBN 978-3-642-24558-9 (2011)

  16. Leavens, G.T., Poll, E., Clifton, C., Cheon, Y., Ruby, C., Cok, D., Kiniry, J.: JML Reference Manual, revision 2344 edn. (2013)

  17. Müller, P., Poetzsch-Heffter, A., Leavens, G.T.: Modular invariants for layered object structures. Sci. Comput. Program. 62(3), 253–286 (2006). doi:10.1016/j.scico.2006.03.001

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  18. The Apache Maven Project website. https://maven.apache.org (2016)

  19. The Overture tool Github repository. https://github.com/overturetool/overture (2016)

  20. Yi, J., Robby, Deng, X., Roychoudhury, A.: Past expression: encapsulating pre-states at post-conditions by means of AOP. In: Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Aspect-oriented Software Development, AOSD ’13, pp. 133–144. ACM. doi:10.1145/2451436.2451453 (2013)

  21. McCarthy, J.: A Basis for a Mathematical Theory of Computation. In: Western Joint Computer Conference (1961)

  22. Tran-Jørgensen, P.W.V.: Automated translation of VDM-SL to JML-annotated Java. Department of Engineering, Aarhus University, Tech. rep. (2016)

  23. Larsen, P.G., Lausdahl, K., Battle, N.: Combinatorial testing for VDM. In: Proceedings of the 2010 8th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods, SEFM ’10, pp. 278–285. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA. doi:10.1109/SEFM.2010.32. ISBN 978-0-7695-4153-2 (2010)

  24. Tran-Jørgensen, P.W.V., Larsen, P.G., Battle, N.: Using JML-based code generation to enhance test automation for VDM models. In: Proceedings of the 14th Overture Workshop (2016)

  25. Fitzgerald, J., Larsen, P.G., Mukherjee, P., Plat, N., Verhoef, M.: Validated Designs for Object-Oriented Systems. Springer, New York (2005). doi:10.1007/b138800

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  26. Vilhena, C.: Connecting between VDM++ and JML. Master’s thesis, Minho University with exchange to Engineering College of Aarhus (2008)

  27. Jin, D., Yang, Z.: Strategies of modeling from VDM-SL to JML. In: International Conference on Advanced Language Processing and Web Information Technology, pp. 320–323 (2008)

  28. Rumbaugh, J., Jacobson, I., Booch, G.: Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual, 2nd edn. Pearson Higher Education, Boston (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Zhou, J., Jin, D.: Research on modeling from VDM-SL to JML for systematic software development. Control and Decision Conference (CCDC). 2010 Chinese, pp. 2312–2317. IEEE, Xuzhou (2010)

  30. Larsen, P.G.: Ten years of historical development: “Bootstrapping” VDMTools. J. Univers. Comput. Sci. 7(8), 692–709 (2001)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  31. Rivera, V., Cataño, N., Wahls, T., Rueda, C.: Code generation for event-B. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. 19:1–22 (2015)

  32. Abrial, J.R.: Modeling in Event-B: System and Software Engineering. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2010)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  33. Lensink, L., Smetsers, S., van Eekelen, M.: Generating verifiable Java code from verified PVS specifications. In: Goodloe, A., Person, S. (eds.) NASA Formal Methods. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7226, pp. 310–325. Springer, Berlin. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-28891-3_30 (2012)

  34. Owre, S., Rushby, J.M., Shankar, N.: PVS: a prototype verification system. In: Kapur, D. (ed.) 11th International Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE). Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 607, pp. 748–752. Springer, Saratoga (1992)

  35. Filliâtre, J.C.: Why: a multi-language multi-prover verification tool. Research Report 1366, LRI, Université Paris Sud. http://www.lri.fr/~filliatr/ftp/publis/why-tool.ps.gz (2003)

  36. Hubbers, E., Oostdijk, M.: Generating JML specifications from UML state diagrams. In: Forum on Specification and Design Languages FDL’03, Frankfurt, Germany, pp 263–273, September 23–26, 2003

  37. Zhen, Z.: Java Card Technology for Smart Cards. Prentice-Hall, Boston (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Klebanov, A.: Automata-based programming technology extension for generation of JML annotated Java card code. In: Proceedings of the Spring/Summer Young Researchers’ Colloquium on Software Engineering, pp. 41–44 (2008)

  39. Cok, D.R.: Reasoning with specifications containing method calls and model fields. J. Object Technol. 4(8), 77–103 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Victor Bandur, Nick Battle and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper. The work of Leavens was supported in part by the US National Science foundation under Grants CCF 1518789 and CNS 1228695.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Peter W. V. Tran-Jørgensen & Peter Gorm Larsen

  2. University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    Gary T. Leavens

Authors
  1. Peter W. V. Tran-Jørgensen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Peter Gorm Larsen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Gary T. Leavens
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter W. V. Tran-Jørgensen.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Tran-Jørgensen, P.W.V., Larsen, P.G. & Leavens, G.T. Automated translation of VDM to JML-annotated Java. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 20, 211–235 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-017-0448-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-017-0448-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation