PREMO: A case study in formal methods and multimedia system specification
David A. Duce, David John Duke, G. Faconti, Iván Herman, Mieke Massink · Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), the national research institute for mathematics and computer science in the Netherlands · 1997
SC24, the sub-committee of the International Organisation for Standardization responsible for the area of computer graphics and image processing, is in the process of completing work on a new standard for multimedia systems, called PREMO. For the #rst time in SC24, formal methods were employed during the development of the standard. The lessons learned from this exercise are interesting fortwo reasons. First, PREMO spans concerns ranging from the underlying object model through to issues related to media content. The broad scope of this work has presented challenges to the use of formal methods that have not been reported in other industrial applications. Second, the standards development process places restrictions on howformal methods can be applied. This paper describes the approaches that the PREMO speci#cation group adopted to address the technical demands of the application area and, critically, where those approaches were found wanting. The lessons learned from the case...