Graphical Representation of Object-Z Speci cation Using MOSES

Inasmuch as formal methods have continued to gain popularity within the industrial community, they are still far from attaining widespread acceptance, especially within the information systems domain. Reasons range from lack of appropriate education and training to lack of tools that provide continuity by integrating formal techniques with more traditional methods that may be more familiar for novice users. The research underlying this thesis aims to encourage use of formal speci cation in the information systems community through the provision of a visual tool to lessen communication di culties with users who are not experts in formal methods, thereby improving the validation process. The tool can be useful also to system analysts as a sketchpad in the early stages of formulating a speci cation. While formal methods o er the advantage of mathematical rigour, object-orientation is a method of software development whose bene ts are fairly well documented. In this thesis, I demonstrate the feasibility of integrating a formal speci cation language with an object-oriented graphical notation. Consequently, I develop a semantic mapping from a formal notation, Object-Z, to MOSES, a semi-formal object-oriented notation, as the rst stage in the development of a CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) workbench to support formal speci cation. The results presented in this thesis will shortly be used to develop a prototype diagram generator which forms a major component of the workbench.