An Eclipse Environment for Z

This book reports on the design, implementation andevaluation of a new interactive Z environment that is integratedinto the Eclipse environment. The Z language is a formalspecification notation that is used to describe and modelcomputer-based systems. For the widespread use of Z, it isdesirable to integrate Z support with amature and popular editingenvironment, such as Eclipse. Eclipse was chosen as the basis forthe new Z environment because it is widely used, it provides richfunctionality and it is designed to be extensible. The Zenvironment described in this book extends Eclipse to provide alarge set of useful features for editing and analyzing Zspecifications, such as a table of Z symbols, constant detection ofsyntax and type errors, outlining facilities, cross-referencing ofZ names and conversion between different Z markups. User feedbackshows that the resulting Z environment is helpful for editing andcorrecting Z specifications. The development of the Z support forEclipse isa part of the CZT (Community Z Tools) project, which isa Java framework for building Z tools and provides parsers,typecheckers and other Z tools.