Formal approach to assertion-based code generation

Abstract

With the growing in size and complexity of modern computer systems, the need for improving the quality at all stages of software development has become a critical issue. The current software production has been largely dependent on manual code development. Despite the slow development process, the errors introduced by the programmers contribute to a substantial portion of defects in the final software product. This paper investigates the synergy of generating code and assertion constraints from formal design models and use them to verify the implementation. We translate Z formal models into their OCL counterparts and Java assertions. With the help of existing tools, we demonstrate various checkings at different levels to enhance correctness.