Net Meeting 31

Review of Action List

The actions are all at Overture on SourceForge.

• 24/4 Find out about Rodin Tool plug-in standard - Assigned to Christian Thillerman.
• 30/1 Update user list on SF
• 31/1 John F & Miguel: Draft Lightweight Community Process
• 31/2 ALL: let John & Miguel know views on Comm Process
• 31/3 Doodle for Newcastle Workshop Dates

John’s comments: I have read some of the JCP 2.0. It is a bit heavyweight for a small organisation like ours of course, but I would accept the principle of its operation. I think we need someone to come up with a proposal for a lightweight approach. At least two issues have to be sorted out: What resource is actually being guarded by this? Is it a standard, a common specification, a code base, a reference implementation? This is a key question because it determines … Who are the “community members” to be represented in the Executive and how are they to be represented?

VDMTools

VDMTools bug status

We forgot to update the bug tracking list. Newest version = 8.2b-090105

Publishin

A publisher thinks to publish “Validated Designs For Object-oriented Systems” Japanese version(Mr. Sakoh will translate) editors meeting passed. But, there are 2 more meeting to publishing.

VDM Team

Team Structure - VDM team is same as before, but CSK Systems is damaged by financial crisis. VDM Sales - Sony started to specify new Edy Chip in VDM++ last month’s report is bad. Sony didn’t start new FeliCa? chip. (FeliCa? chip = mobile Edy chip)

VDM Project

The research project with AIST(www.aist.go.jp—index_en.html) is still stucked. I have to write the outline specification by VDM flavored Japanese

Feature request

Allow to do selective java code generation using command line interface.

Overture

New DevFAQ? page with support info for developers. New mailing list for developer communications (overture-developer)

Status for each of the Overture components at sourceforge

ast (Marcel)

Work in progress, meaning:

• need to check the stdlib (whether it still works / compiles)
• need to check the ast (whether it still compiles)
• need to check-in the parser
• need to add and test the MEASURE modifications

VDMJ (Nick)

Check component into SVN.

UMLTrans (Kenneth and Hans Christian)

The uml transformation is still the same just with a better support for latex text inside source files.

testgen (Peter)

From the test automation team (which I have with me here right now) I would like to suggest that we temporarily start up a seperate project under SF that later on will be moved over under Overture but we simply cannot continue to wait for Marcel to get it set up there. we need to start having our stuff under SVN and using bugzilla like support

eclipse (Cristian)

New version coming out this week.

potrans (Miguel)

No progress to report.

Follow up from the Overture workshop

There was a good dynamic and people got involved, but there was also a lot of things to learn with little time and documentation. The workshop required heavy setup of tools, and better description is needed to guide developers (see DevFAQ?).

A core language board for Overture

John’s considerations: At today’s NetMeeting (NM31), we decided that Miguel and I would work together on the development of a proposal for a lightweight “Community Process” for Overture. This message asks you to contact us with your opinions on such a process.

This issue arose from a discussion in NM30 on setting up a “Language Board”. A concern expressed at that time was that of ensuring that the diverse interests in our community were properly represented in making language decisions. Marcel recommended that we all look at the Java Community Process as a model and I’d still advise you to do that (see http://www.jcp.org<http://www.jcp.org>, specifically http://www.jcp.org/en/procedures/jcp2).

The JCP is a mature process for a big community and we are not in that league so I’d certainly suggest we need something much more lightweight. However, there are elements of the JCP that are appealing. An “Executive” group represents stakeholders (both appointed commercial and elected individuals), and is advised by experts in particular areas before casting a vote on whether to adopt a specific proposal.

For Overture, what things do you think should be governed by this mechanism? The language spec? A reference implementation? Test sets? Nothing at all?

For overture, who are the stakeholders relevant to the things you think shouldbe guarded by our process?

We will collect opinions and report at the next NM, so please respond as soon as you like. In order to promote people saying what they think, please feel free to write to us directly without using the overturetool-core list.

An architecture document for Overture

No progress to report.

A project plan for Overture

Nothing to report.

Overture workshop at FM’09

• Draft of Call For Papers in preparation.
• Consider taking advantage of the large number of participants to use this as a recruitment opportunity as well - maybe have some posters around - or an “open house” with a demo or something.
• Also consider asking someone from Deploy to come and speak about their tools.

Profile of VDM++ on the web

• VDM and VDM++ distinction: what to do?
• Overture web page at wikipedia.
• Further discuss this matter in next workshop.

Publication plans

In preparation:

• Paper path case study (Marcel)
• ACM Computing Surveys paper on industrial applications of FMs (Peter, Juan, John)
• Tools for Policy Design in Virtual Organizations: A Proof-of-Concept Study (John, Jeremy)
• VICE Process paper (John, Peter, Sune Wolff) for Dines Bjoerner
• Pos for Recursive Functions (Augusto, Peter)
• VDM++ and JML (Carlos, Peter)
• Felica (Mr Kurita and maybe Shin?)
• New proof paper (Sander, Peter, John, Augusto, Jozef)

In review:

• 2nd edition of “Modelling Systems”, Cambridge University Press (John & Peter) Now with CUP and being copy-edited

In press:

• PhD thesis (Marcel)
• Jozef and Marcel: Formal Semantics of a VDM Extension for Distributed Embedded Systems; to appear in Festschrift for W P de Roever (LNCS).
• Jozef, A summary of the FM06 and IFM07 paper and enhanced the PVS models, to appear in Festschrift for W P de Roever (LNCS).
• Recently appeared (since last NM): None

Any Other Business

No AOB.

Next Meeting

February 8th, 2009 - 14:00 CE