Using Domain Specific Languages to Support Verification in the Railway Domain

We explore the support of automatic verification via careful design of a domain specific language (DSL) in the context of algebraic specification. Formally a DSL is a loose specification the logical closure of which we regard as implicitly encoded “domain knowledge”. We systematically exploit this “domain knowledge” for automatic verification. We illustrate these ideas within the Railway Domain using the algebraic specification language Casl and an existing DSL, designed by Bjørner, for modelling railways. Empirical evidence to the benefit of our approach is given in the form of the successful automatic verification of four railway track plans of real world complexity.