Automated translation of VDM to JML-annotated Java

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal on software tools for technology transfer Vol. 20; no. 2; pp. 211 - 235
Main Authors Tran-Jørgensen, Peter W. V., Larsen, Peter Gorm, Leavens, Gary T.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.04.2018
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Automation
Computer Science
Java
Modelling
Regular Paper
Software
Software Engineering
Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems
Specification and description languages
Theory of Computation
Code-generation
JML
Java
Formal methods
VDM
Design-by-Contract
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1433-2779
1433-2787
DOI:10.1007/s10009-017-0448-3