(Apologies for multiple copies)
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Call for Participation
Overture Workshop
Co-located Workshop of Formal Methods 2005
http://www.csr.ncl.ac.uk/fm05/main_workshops.php?
mode=info&language=english&workshop=14
July 18, 2005
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
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INTRODUCTION
In the period 1992-1995 the object-oriented version of the formal
specification language VDM-SL, called VDM++, was developed though
the European Commission’s Afrodite project. VDM++ was used in a
wide range of commercial and research projects. This also led
to the development of a commercially available, industry strength
tool (VDMTools) by the Danish company IFAD. Recently, in January
2005, a book appeared (Validated Designs for Object-oriented Systems,
Fitzgerald et al., http://www.vdmbook.com) that illustrates the use
of VDM++ technology, including a number of industrial case studies.
At the beginning of 2004 the authors of this book began to realise
that new insights in tool support for formal specification languages,
the use of new technologies such as XML, and the current trend in
open source software were good incentives for starting the development
of a second tool set supporting the use of VDM++. This open source
project has been named Overture (http://www.overturetool.org).
The mission of the project is twofold: to provide an
industrial-strength tool to allow the use of precise abstract models
in software development, and to foster an environment that allows
researchers and other interested parties to experiment with language
modifications and extensions to the tool. The Eclipse integrated
development environment (http://www.eclipse.org) was selected as
the basis for such a new, open source, VDM++ tool.
Currently a basic toolset exists (VDM++ to XML parser, as an Eclipse
plug-in), and students from Denmark (Technical University of Denmark)
and Portugal (University of Minho) are already working on improvements
and further developments.
AIM
The aim of the workshop is to reflect on 13 years of history with
VDM++ and to boost the momentum that currently exists for the
Overture project. In particular, we want to publicly review the
proposed architecture of the Overture toolset, which is a necessary
boundary condition to enable distributed open source development
successfully.
DATE
The workshop will be held on 18 July 2005.
TARGET AUDIENCE
People interested in VDM++, object-oriented design and open source
developments are expected to attend.
WORKSHOP PROGRAMME
The workshop programme is available from http://www.overturetool.org and
http://www.vdmbook.com.
WORKSHOP CHAIRS
The workshop will be chaired by Dr. Nico Plat (West Consulting,
The Netherlands, [log in to unmask]) and Dr. Peter Gorm Larsen
(Systematic Software Engineering, Denmark, [log in to unmask]).
For more information on the workshop please contact either of them.
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