Vienna Development Method

The Vienna Development Method (VDM) is one of the longest-established formal methods for the development of computer-based systems. Originating in work done at the IBM Laboratory Vienna^[1] in the 1970s, it has grown to include a group of techniques and tools based on a formal specification language—the VDM Specification Language (VDM-SL). It has an extended form, VDM++,^[2] which supports the modeling of object-oriented and concurrent systems. Support for VDM includes commercial and academic tools for analyzing models, including support for testing and proving properties of models and generating program code from validated VDM models. There is a history of industrial usage of VDM and its tools and a growing body of research in the formalism has led to notable contributions to the engineering of critical systems, compilers, concurrent systems and in logic for computer science.

^ Some idea of that work, including a technical report TR 25.139 on "A Formal Definition of a PL/1 Subset", dated 20 December 1974, is reprinted in Jones 1984, p.107-155. Of particular note is the list of authors in order: H. Bekič, D. Bjørner, W. Henhapl, C. B. Jones, P. Lucas.
^ The double plus is adopted from the C++ objected oriented programming language based on C.

[1] Some idea of that work, including a technical report TR 25.139 on "A Formal Definition of a PL/1 Subset", dated 20 December 1974, is reprinted in Jones 1984, p.107-155. Of particular note is the list of authors in order: H. Bekič, D. Bjørner, W. Henhapl, C. B. Jones, P. Lucas.

[2] The double plus is adopted from the C++ objected oriented programming language based on C.

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