In recent years, formal methods (FMs) have been extensively used for verification and validation (V&V) of dependable distributed protocols. Over our studies in utilizing FMs for V&V, we have observed that a number of protocols providing for distributed and dependable services can often be formulated using a small set of basic functional primitives or their variations. Thus, from the formal viewpoint, the objective of this paper is to introduce techniques, utilizing concepts of category theory, that could effectively identify and reuse basic formal modules in order to simplify formal specification and verification for a spectrum of protocols.

Classical approaches to parameterization in axiomatic specification languages require the user to explicitly handle specification instantiation. This often makes specifications less readable and manageable. We therefore present a new parameterization mechanism which allows implicit instantiation. However, since this mechanism is less powerful as the first one we show how to combine them to achieve both elegance and power. We included both mechanisms in the specification language Spectrum.

This paper gives a short introduction to the algebraic specification language Spectrum.

The complexities and the dynamics of evolving software development today require more than ever the provision of reusable building blocks and structuring methods in order to build larger and more complex specifications. This is the first in a series of papers towards a compositional semantics for modular structured VDM specifications. We provide a compositional extension of the denotational semantics for the at VDM-SL, emphasising on contextual structuring. In addition, we discuss some non-interference and compositionality assumptions that underlie the structuring mechanisms of modular VDM specifications and introduce a new structuring assembly called protected import in order to control information flow in contextual structuring.

Abstract. Shape Analysis is concerned with determining shape invariants, i.e. structural properties of the heap, for programs that manipulate pointers and heap-allocated storage. Recently, very precise shape analysis algorithms have been developed that are able to prove the partial correctness of heap-manipulating programs. We explore the use of shape analysis to analyze abstract data types (ADTs). The ADT Set shall serve as an example, as it is widely used and can be found in most of the major data type libraries, like STL, the Java API, or LEDA. We formalize our notion of the ADT Set by algebraic speci cation. Two prototypical C set implementations are presented, one based on lists, the other on trees. We instantiate a parametric shape analysis framework to generate analyses that are able to prove the compliance of the two implementations to their speci cation. 1