Building Specifications in the Event-B Institution

• Published in: Logical methods in computer science Vol. 18, Issue 4
• Main Authors: Farrell, Marie, Monahan, Rosemary, Power, James F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Logical Methods in Computer Science e.V 09.11.2022
• Subjects: computer science - formal languages and automata theory; computer science - logic in computer science
• ISSN: 1860-5974; 1860-5974
• DOI: 10.46298/lmcs-18(4:4)2022

This paper describes a formal semantics for the Event-B specification language using the theory of institutions. We define an institution for Event-B, EVT, and prove that it meets the validity requirements for satisfaction preservation and model amalgamation. We also present a series of functions that show how the constructs of the Event-B specification language can be mapped into our institution. Our semantics sheds new light on the structure of the Event-B language, allowing us to clearly delineate three constituent sub-languages: the superstructure, infrastructure and mathematical languages. One of the principal goals of our semantics is to provide access to the generic modularisation constructs available in institutions, including specification-building operators for parameterisation and refinement. We demonstrate how these features subsume and enhance the corresponding features already present in Event-B through a detailed study of their use in a worked example. We have implemented our approach via a parser and translator for Event-B specifications, EBtoEVT, which also provides a gateway to the Hets toolkit for heterogeneous specification.