A Concurrent Language for Refinement

We present a combination of the well-established formal specification languages Z and CSP; our objective is to provide support for the specification of both data and behaviour aspects of concurrent systems, and a development technique. The resulting language, Circus, distinguishes itself in that it is aimed at the calculational refinement of specifications to programs written in a language similar to occam and Handel-C. In this paper, we present Circus, the rationale for its design, and a case study in its use.

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