Formal Methods - Algebraic Specification vs Object Oriented

Question

I am in the middle of some research and have not been able to find much literature to help, I want to compare the platform dependencies of the two formal methods; algebraic specification and object oriented. Which language would they use?

Does anyone have any knowledge of this or could point me to the right direction? Thanks

Answer 1

I know what "algebraic specification" means (GIYF: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_specification) as my company has built such a system and used it industrial practice. The "language" is that of abstract data types, function signatures and axioms describing what the functions do, with ADTs, signatures, and axioms often packaged into parameterized "algebras" which can be combined to form more complex algebras.

I'm not sure what you mean by "object oriented" (specification). Most OO "designs" are simply sets of classes (which implicitly represent the data types) and signatures, with no attached semantics. I'd hardly call those a "specification"; rather, they are are "sketch".

Answer 2

Pardon me, but specifications, by definition, are platform independent. If you are looking for a specification language that supports object oriented modelling, I suppose VDM++ is a good fit.

Answer 3

I think this paper may help you. It is available online (google it), However, I'm not sure if it is published or not. Nothing about it in the authors DBLP.

"Comparison of Object-Oriented Formal Methods", by Nicolas Guel, Olivier Biberstein, Didier Buchs, Ercument Canver, Marie-Claude Gaudel, Friedrich von Henke, Detlef Schwier.