Abstract State Machines 2003 Advances In Theory And Practice

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Abstract State Machines, ASM 2003, held in Taormina, Italy in March 2003. The 16 revised full papers presented together with 8 invited papers and 12 abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers reflect the state of the art of the abstract state machine method for the design and analysis of complex software/hardware systems. Besides theoretical results and methodological progress, application in various fields are studied as well.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Abstract State Machines, ASM 2003, held in Taormina, Italy in March 2003. The 16 revised full papers presented together with 8 invited papers and 12 abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers reflect the state of the art of the abstract state machine method for the design and analysis of complex software/hardware systems. Besides theoretical results and methodological progress, application in various fields are studied as well.

Abstract state machines (ASM) sharpen the Church-Turing thesis by the c- sideration of bounded resources for computing devices. They view computations as an evolution of a state. It has been shown that all known models of com- tation can be expressed through speci?c abstract state machines. These models can be given in a representation-independent way. That is one advantage of transferring these models to ASM. The main advantage is, however, to provide a unifying theory to all of these models. At the same time ASM can be re?ned to other ASMs. Stepwise re?nement supports separation of concern during so- ware development and will support component-based construction of systems thus providing a foundation of new computational paradigms such as industrial programming, programming-in-the-large, and programming-in-the-world. ASM 2004 continued the success story of the ASM workshops. Previous workshops were held in the following European cities: Taormina, Italy (2003); Dagstuhl, Germany (2002); Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain (2001); Monte Verita, Switherland (2000); Toulouse, France (1999); Magdeburg, Germany (1998); Cannes, France (1998, 1997); Paderborn, Germany (1996); and H- burg, Germany (1994). The ASM workshops have had predecessors, e.g., the famous Lipari Summer School in 1993, whose in?uential outcome was the f- damental Lipari Guide.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Abstract State Machines, ASM 2003, held in Taormina, Italy in March 2003. The 16 revised full papers presented together with 8 invited papers and 12 abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers reflect the state of the art of the abstract state machine method for the design and analysis of complex software/hardware systems. Besides theoretical results and methodological progress, application in various fields are studied as well.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Abstract State Machines, ASM 2003, held in Taormina, Italy in March 2003. The 16 revised full papers presented together with 8 invited papers and 12 abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers reflect the state of the art of the abstract state machine method for the design and analysis of complex software/hardware systems. Besides theoretical results and methodological progress, application in various fields are studied as well.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Abstract State Machines, ASM 2004, held in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany, in May 2004. The 12 revised full research papers presented together with 4 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers reflect state-of-the-art research and development of the abstract state machine method for the design and analysis of complex software and hardware systems. Besides theoretical results and methodological progress, applications in various fields are studied as well.

This book uses a variety of applications to illustrate a modeling method that helps practitioners to manage complex software-intensive systems. The proposed method relies on the combination of its abstraction concept and its operational character, with behavioral models in the precise and simple form of Abstract State Machines (ASMs). The book introduces both the modeling method (Part I) and the available tool support (Part II): In Part I the authors detail (using numerous examples) how to construct, explain, debug, explore, extend and reuse accurate system design models, starting from scratch. Only an elementary knowledge of common mathematical (including set-theoretic) notation and some basic experience with computational processes (systems, programs, algorithms) is assumed. Part II then shows how the modeling method can be supported by implementing tools that make design models executable and debuggable. To illustrate how to build, debug and maintain systems and to explain their construction in a checkable manner, a general, problem-oriented refinement method is adopted to construct system models from components. The method starts with abstract models and refines them step by step, incrementally adding further details that eventually lead to code. Intended for practitioners who build software intensive systems, and students specializing in software engineering, it can be used both for self-study and for teaching, and it can serve as a reference book. Exercises are included to help readers check their understanding of the explained concepts. For many models defined in the book, refinements to executable versions can be downloaded for experimental validation from the book’s website at http://modelingbook.informatik.uni-ulm.de

The papers in this volume aim at obtaining a common understanding of the challenging research questions in web applications comprising web information systems, web services, and web interoperability; obtaining a common understanding of verification needs in web applications; achieving a common understanding of the available rigorous approaches to system development, and the cases in which they have succeeded; identifying how rigorous software engineering methods can be exploited to develop suitable web applications; and at developing a European-scale research agenda combining theory, methods and tools that would lead to suitable web applications with the potential to implement systems for computation in the public domain.