This volume presents the proceedings of the 2nd VDM-Europe Symposium held in Dublin, Ireland, September 12-16, 1988. VDM, the Vienna Development Method, is a formal method for software engineering. It is being applied to an increasing number of projects by companies throughout Europe and there is an active international research programme supporting this process. "VDM - The Way Ahead" is the second of a series of symposia sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) and organised by VDM-Europe. The term "formal method" refers to mathematically formal software specification and production methods. These methods aim to increase the quality of software in two related ways: by improving the specification and by making verification during the software production process more effective and easier to audit. The symposium proceedings focus on five areas of interest: education and technology transfer, experience and use of VDM, tools and support environments, method development and foundation at work, the standardisation of VDM. The proceedings are of interest to all those concerned with the application of more rigorous approaches to software development and the associated theoretical foundations.

InhaltsangabeComputing is a physical science.- Structuring for the VDM specification language.- Correctness for beginners.- Understanding an informal description: Office documents architecture, an ISO standard.- Towards a formal definition of GKS and other graphics standards.- Report from the BSI panel for the standardisation of VDM (IST/5/50).- Formal methods in standards-A report from the BCS working group.- The B tool (Abstract).- Specification of an operating system kernel forest and VDM compared.- Compiler prototyping with VDM and standard ML.- VDM development with Ada as the target language.- NUSL: An executable specification language based on data abstraction.- A support system for formal reasoning: Requirements and status.- The use of VDM within the Alvey Flagship project.- The formal definition of modula-2 and its associated interpreter.- Test case selection using VDM.- The VIP VDM Specification Language.- Sample - A functional language.- A three-valued logic for software specification and validation.- Three-valued predicates for software specification and validation.- A set-theoretic model for a typed polymorphic lambda calculus a contribution to MetaSoft.- Mutually recursive algebraic domain equations.- Proof rules for VDM statements.- Muffin: A user interface design experiment for a Theorem Proving Assistant.- The RAISE language, method and tools.- Correctness proofs for META IV written code generator specifications using term rewriting.- Using VDM with rely and guarantee-conditions.- Software support for the refinement of VDM specifications.- The use of VDM in the specification of Chinese characters.