Concurrency and Data Types: A Specification Method: An Example with LOTOS

Methods are needed to help using formal specifications in a practical way. We present a specification method that takes into account both the specification of concurrent activity and the specification of the data types involved. It is applied here to LOTOS specification, but it may be used for other formalisms. Our method is both constraint oriented (for the processes decomposition into parallel subprocesses) and state oriented (for the design of the sequential components). This latter aspect is based on (i) the design of an automaton from the external behaviour description, (ii) the generation of a LOTOS specification associated with this automaton. We illustrate our method through a simple example, a hospital.

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