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Annotations in formal specifications and proofs

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Abstract

Formal specification languages and proof methodologies are useful tools in reasoning about different domains: they provide a precise notation in which to express facts, and rigorous procedures with which to ascertain correctness properties of claims made. However, there are several drawbacks to such methods: formal languages make it difficult to express the richness of description of problems and facts, and inferences in these systems are made by choosing from a limited set of small logical steps that do not bear an obvious relationship to the way humans derive and understand proofs.

This paper describes a system of annotations that can be used to incorporate informal semantic information concerning the domain being reasoned about into a formal proof environment, in such a way as to guide proof development and provide proof explanation. These annotations can be used to provide a link between mechanized processing and the meaning assigned to the symbols being processed. While the concepts proposed are general, this paper presents an implementation of annotations in the HOL proof system, and demonstrates the usefulness of these annotations in the context of the verification of computational systems.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, CB2 3Q5, UK

    Saraswati Kalvala

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  1. Saraswati Kalvala
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Additional information

This work was sponsored under Boeing Contract NAS1-18586, Task Assignment No. 3, with NASA-Langley Research Center, and by NSA under agreement DOD-MDA 904-91-C-7053, during the author's affiliation with the University of California, Davis, USA.

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Kalvala, S. Annotations in formal specifications and proofs. Form Method Syst Des 5, 119–144 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01384236

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