VDM♣: Mathematical Structures for Formal Methods
Andrew Butterfield 19th May 2000
Abstract This talk describes the philosophy and work of the “Irish School” of the Vienna Development Method (VDM♣). It starts by placing the Irish School in its historical context within the other schools of VDM. It proceeds to introduce the notation and methodology of VDM♣, by contrast with the VDM-SL standard. The notion of mathematical structure as a key organising principle is then explored, looking at monoids and their morphisms, and their application to modelling problems. The use of category theory as a meta-organising principle is also stressed, with a discussion of the importance of issues such as topoi, algebras and co-algebras. The talk will end in an exploration of the relationship between the “Irish School”, and other formal methods, such as VDM-SL, Z, CCS, CSP, as well as tools like Mathematica, PVS and Isabelle.
We present VDM♣, a history and an introduction. We explain how to specify and refine a simple dictionary system. We show the intimate connection to functional programming languages. We then talk about structure - monoids and their morphisms, with further examples We introduce indexing and explore the concept, including bags, relations, indexing towers, as well as the auto-(or self-?)indexing structure. We explore the geometry aspects, touching on recursion diagrams and sheaves and fibre-bundles. We then explore the meta-theory of structure, namely category theory, and point to future work in this area, with particular emphasis on the interrelationships between algebraic and co-algebraic approaches. Finally, we comment on the Irish School’s rˆ
- le in advising on mathematical toolkits for existing model-theoretic