© 1987 by British Computer Society
Formal Specification A Comparison of Two Techniques
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0QX, UK
There are two approaches to formal specification, algebraic techniques and constructive techniques. This paper compares representatives of these two approaches, OBJ, which is an algebraic technique, and VDM, which is a constructive technique. These approaches are compared in the context of an example taken from the ISO computer graphics standard, the Graphical Kernel System (GKS). The paper contains tutorial introductions to OBJ and VDM as well as a concise description of the GKS concepts contained in the example.
Received January 1986. revised May 1986.
* Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0QX