Visualising Event-B Models with B-Motion Studio

Motivation

The communication between a developer and a domain expert (or manager) is very important for successful deployment of formal methods. On the one hand it is crucial for the developer to get feedback from the domain expert for further development. On the other hand the domain expert needs to check whether his expectations are met. An animation tool allows to check the presence of desired functionality and to inspect the behaviour of a specification, but requires knowledge about the mathematical notation. To avoid this problem, it is useful to create domain specific visualisations. One tool which performs this task is Brama. This tool is very important for ClearSy, and is being used for several industrial projects and has helped to obtain several contracts. However, the tool cannot be applied in conjunction with ProB. Also, creating the code that defines the mapping between a state and its graphical representation is a rather time consuming task. It can take several weeks to develop a custom visualisation.

This research is being carried out as part of the DFG funded research project GEPAVAS and the EU funded FP7 research project 214158: DEPLOY (Industrial deployment of advanced system engineering methods for high productivity and dependability).