Software environment support for integrated formal program specification and development

Formal program development has gained widespread academic interest as a rigorous software engineering technique. One of the main hurdles for the wider IT industry in adopting these formal techniques is a lack of tools to support their use in combination with more traditional development techniques. This paper describes an integrated environment for object-oriented software development which incorporates formal Object-Z specifications for classes. These formal specification views are kept consistent with more traditional design and implementation views, allowing software developers to design, refine, implement and document their software utilising integrated formal techniques.