Formal Methods Fact File: Vdm and Z (Wiley Series in Software Engineering Practice)

Rating:
Summary: notation is not everything
Review: Formal methods have basically the same idea as Bertrand Meyer's "Design By Contract" behind: describe formally what program is supposed to do, not how it must be done. Those formal specifications need to be expressed in some language(s), and authors cover some of them.

I've bought this book before my interest in Constraint Programming, in general, and Constraint Databases, in particular, materialized. Today, I see constraints as a presize definition of formal specification. Exaggerrating a little bit: "You could invent any notation you want; to make it really useful, however, some undertanding of constraint problem area is necessary".

Rating:
Summary: notation is not everything
Review: Formal methods have basically the same idea as Bertrand Meyer's "Design By Contract" behind: describe formally what program is supposed to do, not how it must be done. Those formal specifications need to be expressed in some language(s), and authors cover some of them.

I've bought this book before my interest in Constraint Programming, in general, and Constraint Databases, in particular, materialized. Today, I see constraints as a presize definition of formal specification. Exaggerrating a little bit: "You could invent any notation you want; to make it really useful, however, some undertanding of constraint problem area is necessary".