Lotos Tools Based On The Cornell Synthesizer Generator

LOTOS (Language Of Temporal Ordering Specification) became an international standard in 1989, although application of preliminary versions of the language to communication services and protocols of the ISO/OSI family dates back to 1984. This history of the use of LOTOS made it apparent that more advantages than the pure production of standard reference documents were to be expected from the use of such formal description techniques. LOTOSphere: Software Development with LOTOS describes in depth a five year project that moved LOTOS out of the ISO tower into software engineering practice. LOTOS became a vehicle for efficient, yet formally based industrial software specification, design, verification, implementation and testing. LOTOSphere: Software Development with LOTOS is divided into six parts. The first introduces the reader to LOTOS and the project LOTOSphere. The five remaining each treat an important part of the software development life cycle using LOTOS. This is the first book to give a comprehensive treatment of the use of these formal description techniques in a software engineering environment. It will thus be a valuable reference for researchers and software developers and can also be used as a text for an advanced course on the subject.

Formality is becoming accepted as essential in the development of complex systems such as multi-layer communications protocols and distributed systems. Formality is mandatory for mathematical verification, a procedure being imposed on safety-critical system development. Standard documents are also becoming increasingly formalised in order to capture notions precisely and unambiguously. This FORTE '91 proceedings volume has focussed on the standardised languages SDL, Estelle and LOTOS while, as with earlier conferences, remaining open to other notations and techniques, thus encouraging the continuous evolution of formal techniques. This useful volume contains 29 submitted papers, three invited papers, four industry reports, and four tool reports organised to correspond with the conference sessions.

Proceedings

Researchers and practitioners concerned with the application of formal methods to the design, description, analysis, implementation and testing of open systems contributed to this book. It is the ninth in a successful series of annual volumes.

Selected research papers collected in this volume cover various theoretical and practical aspects of Formal Description Techniques (FDTs), e.g. LOTOS, Estelle, SDL, TTCN and ASN.1, for communications protocols. The main subject areas covered by the papers are: ndash; Theoretical and practical aspects of analysing formal descriptions, including translation, implementation and test generation ndash; Practical experience of using FDTs ndash; Software tools to support the applications of FDTs ndash; FDT language design issues and FDT extensions ndash; Perspective on FDTs.

This proceedings contains a selection of papers covering the most relevant areas of application of standardized FDTs, including ASNI, Estelle, LOTOS and SDL. An extensive description of tools for FDTs is provided as well as applications related to implementation derivation, design by stepwise refinement, testing, transformation, formalization of standards, industrial transfer, and others. A small number of papers dealing with language issues, basic theoretical aspects of the target FDTs, and comparisons between standardized FDTs and alternative approaches have also been included.