Subject: SC22 N2776 - WG19 Business Plan/Convener Report for Plenary

From: "william c. rinehuls" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 18:24:31 -0400 (EDT)

________________ beginning of title page _________________________
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A. (ANSI)

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
N2776

TITLE:
WG19 Business Plan and WG19 Convener's Report for the August 1998 JTC 1/
SC22 Plenary

DATE ASSIGNED:
1998-07-31

SOURCE:
Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22

BACKWARD POINTER:
N/A

DOCUMENT TYPE:
WG Convener's Report

PROJECT NUMBER:
N/A

STATUS:
This document will be on the agenda for the August 1998 JTC 1/ SC22
Plenary

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI

DUE DATE:
N/A

DISTRIBUTION:
Text

CROSS REFERENCE:
N/A

DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Def

Address reply to:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat
William C. Rinehuls
8457 Rushing Creek Court
Springfield, VA 22153 USA
Telephone:  +1 (703) 912-9680
Fax:  +1 (703) 912-2973
email:  [email-masked]

__________ end of title page; beginning of report _____________________

BUSINESS PLAN AND CONVENER'S REPORT
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG19 (Formal Specification Languages)

PERIOD COVERED:
SEPTEMBER 1997 to AUGUST 1998

SUBMITTED BY:

John Wordsworth
IBM United Kingdom Laboratories
MP 094 Hursley Park
Winchester
Hants SO21 2JN
UK

Email: [email-masked]
Phone: +44 1962 815700

1: MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

1.1: JTC1/SC22/WG19 Statement of Scope

WG 19 is responsible for formal methods activities, formal specification
languages, and syntactic metalanguages.  It is currently responsible for two
specification languages, VDM-SL and Z Notation, and for the syntactic
metalanguage Extended BNF.

1.2: General Statement

Most of the work of WG 19 is carried out by two rapporteur groups, VDM, and Z.

The Working Group is responsible for the syntactic metalanguage project which
at present involves maintenance of the standard (ISO/IEC 14977).  The BSI
version of this standard was used in conjunction with VDM-SL in the definition
of the ISO standard for Modula-2, and to describe the concrete syntax of
VDM-SL.  It is also used in the latest working draft of the Z Notation
rapporteur group.  The high quality of the original standard has meant that
maintenance work has been minimal.

During 1998 the Convener, Derek Andrews, resigned, and an Acting Convener, John
Wordsworth, was appointed.  Mr Wordsworth has since been confirmed as Convener
of the Working Group.

No meetings of the Working Group have been held in 1998, though the new
Convener has been in touch with members by Email to assure himself of their
interest in the work of the group.  The meeting planned for September 1998 has
been postponed.  When joint business is identified, a meeting of the Working
Group will be scheduled in the first half of 1999.  The Z rapporteur group has
had several meetings, as noted in the group's report.

The reports of the two rapporteur groups follow.

VDM-SL RAPPORTEUR GROUP

1: Management Summary

1.1: JTC1/SC22/WG19 VDM-SL Statement of Scope

This rapporteur group is responsible for the VDM-SL standard and related
activities.

1.2: Project Report

1.2.1: Completed Projects

The VDM-SL (Part 1) Standard was published in December 1996.  No new projects
have been completed in the reporting period.

1.2.2: Projects Under Way

The rapporteur group will continue its work on this project by setting up a
mechanism to consider corrections and how a technical corrigendum will be made
available (if and as necessary). Some minor typographical errors have been
discovered and noted. When the list is larger, it will be issued. (It currently
contains five entries --- all minor.)

Work on Part II of the Standard continues slowly, a review of the various
approaches was completed and a work plan constructed (see below).

1.2.3: Cancelled Projects

There are no cancelled projects.

1.2.4: Cooperation and Competition

The WG19-VDM group involves collaborative work of six participating P-members:
UK, Denmark, Holland, France, Japan and the USA. The Standardization work was
also supported by the EU by various grants.

There are no competitive activities.

2: Period Review

2.1: Market Requirements

The increase in the need for safety-critical systems will imply increased
interest in formal languages.

In previous reports it was stated that the main task of the VDM-SL working
group (apart from routine maintenance of the Standard) was the production of
part 2 of the Standard which is concerned with the introduction of some sort of
modularization In the previous reports from this group, the possibility of
adding an Object Oriented Structure to VDM-SL was discussed

The original proposal for the second part of the VDM-SL Standard was clear that
an extension to VDM-SL was required to provide a mechanism to partition (large)
specifications. This proposal was part of the VDM-SL Standard; written as an
appendix. Work on Standardizing an existing language was started, but
Industrial interest focused on  an alternative extension that was part of an
Esprit project. Work on modules had been undertaken  by members of the working
group, especially  John Fitzgerald and the convener --- this work was to look
at various mechanisms for extending VDM-Sl with a modular structure. There is
European interest  (the Netherlands, Denmark and the UK)  in OO extensions to
VDM-SL and several industrial users are working on such extensions under the
umbrella of VDM++.  Thus it is clear that OO extensions are required by
industry, and should be the subject of the second VDM-SL  Standard rather than
just extensions for Modules. There is also work being undertaken in the USA on
using formal methods in specifying OO systems.

The VDM-SL subgroup is currently involved in reviewing the future direction of
the second phase of the Standard. Work has been carried out by Email and
documents describing VDM++ have been circulated to subgroup members. The VDM++
language is currently being reviewed in the light of industrial experience
using it and an updated version will be circulated in the new year. If the
subgroup feels that the language is stable enough (there has been little change
to the basic language since its inception four years ago) then it is intended
that the language description be circulated as a CD for the OO extensions to
VDM-SL.

2.2: Achievements

Decision to proceed to extend VDM-SL with object-oriented features.

2.3: Resources

The second part of the standard will be based on work produced by an EC
research and development program.

3: Focus for Next Work Period

The original work plan for the project to produce Part II of the VDM-SL
Standard consists of the following three major tasks:

- task 1 : The OO structuring

This is concerned with adding classes and related constructs to VDM-SL so that
it can support the specification of Object Oriented systems.

 - task 2 : The parallel features

The semantics of objects are such that in specifications, if an execution model
is used to provide informal semantics, they require `concurrency'. Thus
parallel features need to be considered for the model to be as general as
possible.

- task 3 : The Real time features

An OO specification must have a interpretation that allows concurrency, thus a
possible refinement is to preserve the parallelism inherent in an OO
specification, this implies that real-time features should be added as part of
this effort.

There is a possible additional task 4: VDM refinement rules and their proof
could be included if the progress on the other topics progresses quickly ---
this was always part of the Standardization effort.

It is likely that tasks 3 and 4  will be out-plan; the Second part of the
Standard will only address those extensions covered by tasks 1) and 2).

3.1: Deliverables

The deliverables time schedule:

OO structuring proposal and concurrency proposal produced and distributed end
1997.

Work is currently in hand reviewing this. New version to be distributed to
committee end 1998.

3.2: Strategies

A mechanism for dealing with defect reports against the VDM-SL Standard will be
put in place as and when necessary.  (None have occurred at this time.)

3.2.1: Risks

Lack of EC funding caused a delay in the work schedule described in last year's
report.

3.2.2: Opportunities

3.3: Work Program Priorities

Tasks 1.1 and 1.2 of the work plan.

4: Other Items

4.1: Possible Action Requests at Forthcoming Plenary

To continue work on Part 2 of the standard.

4.2: Project Editor

The Project Editor for the VDM-SL project is unchanged, though he has changed
his addresses and telephone numbers:

Derek Andrews
School of Information Systems
Nene - University College Northampton
Park Campus
Broughton Green Road
Northampton NN2 7AL
UK

Email: [email-masked]
Tel:    (+44) 1604 735500 Ext 2806
Mobile: (+44) 411 638 129

4.3: Electronic Document Distribution

Nearly all work is of this subgroup is carried out by Email, it is intended to
continue this.

4.4: Recent Meetings

There have been no recent meetings.

4.5: Future Meetings

Electronic meeting in October, date to be fixed.

Z NOTATION RAPPORTEUR GROUP

1: Management Summary

1.1: JTC1/SC22/WG19 Z Notation Statement of Scope

This rapporteur group is responsible for the Z Notation Standard and related
activities.

1.2: Project Report

1.2.1: Completed Projects

The group has prepared an interim working draft based on the CD submitted in
September 1995.  The new draft contains many changes made in response to
comments received on the first CD.

1.2.2: Projects Under Way

To finalize the changes to the annexes, which contain a summary of all the
technical material (lexis, syntaxes, semantic equations, type inference rules,
etc.)

To prepare the manual pages for the language constructs based on the material
in the annexes.

To submit the whole as a Committee Draft.

1.2.3: Cancelled Projects

There are no cancelled projects.

1.2.4: Cooperation and Competition

The work of the group continues to involve the participation of members from
the UK, USA, Australia, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Ireland,
and New Zealand.  The work of the group has been assisted by grants from
industrial and government agencies in the USA and Europe.

There are no competitive activities.

2: Period Review

2.1: Market Requirements

The increasing interest in safety-critical systems and in secure systems
suggests a continuing interest in the use of the Z notation.  Industrial users
of the Z notation continue to exert pressure for a standard, and contribute
people's time to the work,.

2.2: Achievements

An interim draft of the next CD has been produced as a working document for the
use of the group.

2.3: Resources

Lack of funding for the Project Editor led to some delay in the work of
producing the interim draft.  A new Project Editor has been proposed.

3: Focus for Next Work Period

To proceed to completion of the next CD. The group hopes that this second CD
will be able to proceed to Draft International Standard status with little
amendment.  The breakdown is as follows:

Task 1.  To complete the normative annexes.
Task 2.  To produce the manual pages based on the content of the normative
annexes.
Task 3.  To make, review, and accept proposals to clear up any outstanding
technical issues.

3.1: Deliverables

The next CD, like its predecessor, consists of two main normative parts:
Manual pages, which discuss the notation construct by construct, and annexes
that summarize the technical material on which the manual pages are based.

The first deliverable for the next reporting period is the annexes, which are
to be complete, apart from some minor technical issues, by the end of November
1998.

The second deliverable is the completed CD for review by the Working Group  to
be available in May 1999.

3.2: Strategies

The project editor is to complete the annexes, which contain a summary of all
the technical material of the standard, in accordance with the changes approved
by the group.  Notice of proposals for changes are distributed to members of
the group, who can retrieve the technical papers by FTP.  Email comments and
discussions lead to the proposal being accepted if their is a consensus.

3.2.1: Risks

The Acting Project Editor has little experience of standards work.

Owing to the technically complex nature of the source material for the working
committee draft, there is likely to be some delay in transferring skills from
one project editor to another.

3.2.2: Opportunities

The content of the next CD is near enough to stability for the language to be
made available on an experimental basis to other standards writers.

3.3: Work Program Priorities

The tasks have been listed in priority order.

4: Other Items

4.1: Possible Action Requests at Forthcoming Plenary

To continue the work of drafting the next CD in accordance with plan already
described.

To confirm the appointment of Dr Ian Toyn as Project Editor for the Z Notation.

4.2: Project Editor

During the reporting period the project editor, Mr John Nicholls, resigned, and
Dr Ian Toyn was appointed Acting Project Editor.

The plenary will be asked to approve the appointment of the new Project Editor:

Dr Ian Toyn,
Dept of Computer Science,
University of York,
York YO1 5DD
UK

Email: [email-masked]
Phone: +44 1904 433386

4.3: Electronic Document Distribution

Some of the work of the group is carried out by Email.  Electronic versions of
working documents are maintained in FTP sites, and a register of current
documents, with some Internet links, is maintained on a Web site.

4.4: Recent Meetings

In the reporting period the group has met approximately every two months at
various locations in the UK.

4.5: Future Meetings

Meetings are planned for September (in Berlin) and November (in the UK).  Other
meetings will be arranged as required to complete the work of drafting the next
CD.

___________________ end of SC22 N2776 _________________________________