Rapid prototyping from VDM specifications using Ada

A collaborative research programme has existed between scientists at the Admiralty Research Establishment (ARE) Portsdown and the Software Engineering Group at RMCS, in order to investigate software engineering techniques for knowledge-based systems (KBS) employed for real-time data fusion within shipborne naval command and control systems. One aspect of this research, conducted at ARE with RMCS support, has concentrated upon the use of formal methods for the development of rule-based systems (J. Haugh, 1992). This work has centred upon the development of a Vienna Development Method (VDM) specification for a simplified version of an ARE data-fusion model which is based upon the blackboard-expert system paradigm. From this specification, a high-level animation of the data fusion model has been achieved using Prolog, and the formal refinement of the VDM specification through to an Ada implementation has also been investigated