4th Refinement Workshop -

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Résumé :
This volume contains the papers presented at the 4th Refinement Workshop, organised by the Formal Aspects group of the British Computer Society, and held in Cambridge on January 9-11, 1991. Refinement is the term used to describe systematic and formal methods of specifying hardware and software, and transforming the specifications into designs and implementations. The value of formal methods in producing reliable hardware and software is by now widely appreciated among both academics and many workers in industry, although such methods - and in particular their application to industrial-scale problems - are still in their infancy. This workshop brought together some of the best European workers in the field to present tutorials on the state of the art in both theory and industrial application, to describe their latest research, and to indicate future directions. The papers cover the development of both sequential and concurrent systems, and both theoretical ideas and support tools for their effective use. This volume will be of interest to researchers in formal methods, and software engineers wanting to keep track of developments in the application of formal methods in industry.

Sommaire:
The Process of Refinement: Introductory Talk to the 4th Refinement Workshop.- Engineering Real Software Using Formal Methods.- Specialising Abstract Programs.- A Refinement Case Study (Using the Abstract Machine Notation).- Assertional Data Reification Proofs: Survey and Perspective.- Formal Methods and the Sociology of Proof.- Refinement Diagrams.- A Case Study in Timed Refinement: A Central Heater.- Object Oriented Specification and Refinement.- The Ecology of Class Refinement.- Transforming Axioms for Data Types into Sequential Programs.- Refinement of Two Graph Problems.- CSP and Timewise Refinement.- The Elusive Software Refinery: A Case Study in Program Development.- A Theory of State-based Parallel Programming: Part 1.- Design, Verification and Documentation of Concurrent Systems.- A Formal Method for Hard Real-Time Programming.- Constructing and Refining Modules in a Type Theory.- The Varieties of Refinement.- Timed Process Algebra, Petri Nets and Event Refinement.- Author Index.