VDMTools: Advances in Support for Formal Modeling in VDM

摘要

We describe the current status of VDMTools, a group of tools supporting the analysis of system models expressed in the formal language of the Vienna Development Method. Three dialects of the language are supported: the ISO standard VDM specification language with support for modular structuring, the extension VDM++ which supports object-oriented structuring and concurrency, and a version extending VDM++ with features for modeling and analysing distributed embedded real-time systems. VDMTools provides extensive static semantics checking, automatic code generation, round-trip mapping to UML class diagrams, documentation support, test coverage analysis and debugging support. The tools focus is on supporting the cost-effective development and exploitation of formal models in industrial settings. The paper presents the components of VDMTools and reports experience using them for the development of large models.