Object-z: a Specification Language Advocated for the Description of Standards Object-z: a Speciication Language Advocated for the Description of Standards

The importance of formalising the speciication of standards has been recognised for a number of years. This paper advocates the use of the formal speciication language Object-Z in the deenition of standards. Object-Z is an extension to the Z language speciically to facilitate speciication in an object-oriented style. First, the syntax and semantics of Object-Z are described informally. Then the use of Object-Z in formalising standards is demonstrated by presenting a case study based on the ODP Trader. Finally, a formal semantics is introduced that suggests an approach to the standardisation of Object-Z itself. Because standards are typically large complex systems, the extra structuring aaorded by the Object-Z class construct and operation expressions enables the various hierarchical relationships and the communication between objects in a system to be succinctly speciied.