This book constitutes the proceedings of the Second International Conference on Abstract State Machines, B and Z, which took place in Orford, QC, Canada, in February 2010. The 26 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions. The book also contains two invited talks and abstracts of 18 short papers which address work in progress, industrial experience reports and tool descriptions. The papers cover recent advances in four equally rigorous methods for software and hardware development: abstract state machines (ASM), Alloy, B and Z. They share a common conceptual framework, centered around the notions of state and operation, and promote mathematical precision in the modeling, verification and construction of highly dependable systems.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Third International Conference on Abstract State Machines, B, VDM, and Z, which took place in Pisa, Italy, in June 2012. The 20 full papers presented together with 2 invited talks and 13 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The ABZ conference series is dedicated to the cross-fertilization of five related state-based and machine-based formal methods: Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, VDM, and Z. They share a common conceptual foundation and are widely used in both academia and industry for the design and analysis of hardware and software systems. The main goal of this conference series is to contribute to the integration of these formal methods, clarifying their commonalities and differences to better understand how to combine different approaches for accomplishing the various tasks in modeling, experimental validation and mathematical verification of reliable high-quality hardware/software systems.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Abstract State Machines, B, TLA, VDM and Z, which took place in Toulouse, France, in June 2014. The 13 full papers presented together with 3 invited talks and 19 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 81 submissions. The ABZ conference series is dedicated to the cross-fertilization of six related state-based and machine-based formal methods: Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, TLA, VDM and Z. They share a common conceptual foundation and are widely used in both academia and industry for the design and analysis of hardware and software systems. The main goal of this conference series is to contribute to the integration of these formal methods, clarifying their commonalities and differences to better understand how to combine different approaches for accomplishing the various tasks in modeling, experimental validation and mathematical verification of reliable high-quality hardware/software systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Abstract State Machines, Alloy, B, TLA, VDM, and Z, ABZ 2016, held in Linz, Austria, in May 2016. The 17 full and 15 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 submissions. They record the latest research developments in state-based formal methods Abstract State Machines, Alloy, B, Circus, Event-B, TLS+, VDM and Z.

"This book presents current research on all aspects of domain-specific language for scholars and practitioners in the software engineering fields, providing new results and answers to open problems in DSL research"--

Structures of Computing explains the behavioral meaning of fundamental concepts of computing from a practical viewpoint and in generic terms, unrestricted by specific computing devices or programming languages. To compute is understood as processing structures by a set of cooperating agents each of which executes an algorithm assigned to it and interacts with the other agents. Part I of the book defines the conceptual constituents of interactive processes: (i) data, i.e. structured objects with associated properties, relations and functions the algorithmic processes operate upon, (ii) basic operations that affect the data in single execution steps, and (iii) control mechanisms that determine the combination of single steps in multi-agent computations where the interaction happens via communication or other forms of data sharing. Part II analyses these constituents concerning (i) methods to achieve process correctness (inspection, experimental validation, reasoning), (ii) principal computational paradigms (architectures, programming styles, communication structures, control patterns from sequential and reflective to concurrent, mixed synchronous/asynchronous and data flow control), and (iii) complexity (power and limits of computing structures). The book is mainly addressed to students and professionals who want to understand the conceptual foundation of computing. It does not assume any specific programming experience but only a basic understanding of what are mechanically executable processes and their descriptions. Any unnecessary formalism is thus avoided, and definitions are formulated as much as possible in natural language, using common mathematical notation only where needed to prevent ambiguities. Numerous examples and exercises serve as comprehension checkpoints.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Rigorous State-Based Methods, ABZ 2021, which was planned to take place in Ulm, Germany, during June 6-11, 2021. The conference changed to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 6 full and 8 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 18 submissions. The proceedings also include 3 PhD symposium contributions. They deal with state-based and machine-based formal methods, mainly Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, TLA+, VDM, and Z.