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The Computer Journal 1987 30(4):337-342; doi:10.1093/comjnl/30.4.337
© 1987 by British Computer Society
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A Programmed, Skeleton Formal Specification Method: The OUFDM

P. Leith *

Department of Jurisprudence, Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN, UK

Students of formal methods are often confused by the complexities of the methods and the need for some mathematical sophistication in the handling of notations, a situation compounded at the Open University by the problems of teaching computing ‘at a distance’. The novel method described here (the Open University Formal Definition Method – OUFDM) was designed by the author whilst a member of the Computing Discipline at the OU to try and overcome some of the problems of teaching students of computing the essence of formal specification methods. It uses UCSD Pascal as the description language, the object language being a ‘toy’ blocks world language. The OUFDM is important in that it demonstrates how complex formal methods can be made more accessible for teaching purposes. The design was implemented by the Academic Computing Service at the Open University of the course M353, ‘Programming and Programming Languages’.

Received May 1985. revised April 1986.

* Department of Jurisprudence, Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN


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