Chief chefs of Z to Alloy: Using a Kitchen example to teach Alloy with Z

Abstract

Z is a well-defined and well-known specification language. Unfortunately, it takes significant expertise to use existing tools (such as theorem provers) to automatically check properties of Z specifications. Because Alloy is substantially similar to Z and the Alloy Analyzer offers a relatively simple method of model checking, we believe that Alloy should be largely employed in classes that teach Z. To this end, we present an online tutorial especially designed to help students transition from Z to Alloy. The tutorial includes both the classic Birthday Book example and a large real-world scenario based on a Kitchen Environment. Our experiences with novices studying the tutorial suggest that the tutorial helps students learn both Z and Alloy. In addition, novices can answer questions correctly about the approximately 500-line Kitchen Environment model after only a few hours of study. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.