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From: eka@cs.ed.ac.uk (Edmund Kazmierczak)
Newsgroups: comp.specification
Subject: Re: Structuring large spec VDM vs Z ? (was Re: VDM vs Z notation?)
Keywords: LOTOS, Z
Message-ID: <13164@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 25 Jun 91 09:32:00 GMT
References: <1991Jun18.152454.27474@fmg.bt.co.uk> <2017@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>
Sender: nnews@cs.ed.ac.uk
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh
Lines: 28

In article <2017@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>, anthony@cs.uq.oz.au (Anthony Lee) writes:
> A lot people responded to the original question about VDM vs Z
> stated that one of their reasons for choosing either VDM or Z was
> because of the language's ability to structure large specifications.
> However nobody bother backing up their statements, i.e. nobody
> said why say VDM was better for structuring.

Another language ought to be mentioned here and that is Extended ML,
although it is not a "pure" specification language but a wide-spectrum 
language based on Standard ML.  Briefly, the module facilities of Standard 
ML are used to structure the specifications.  These can then be refined
into Standard ML code.  

> 
> The next question is do you think object-orientation could 
> assist the building of incremental specifications ?
> 

Myself and a colleague are looking into it for Object Z.

________________________________________________________________________________

Edmund Kazmierczak
email : eka@lfcs.ed.ac.uk
LFCS, Dept. of Computer Science
The King's Buildings
Universilty of Edinburgh
United Kingdom, EH9 3JZ