Towards a Formal Model of Consistency in ODP

The ODP (Open Distributed Processing) development model is a natural progression from OSI. Multiple viewpoints are used to specify complex ODP systems. The conformance assessment methodology for ODP defines the relationships between specifications and implementations that must be proved in order that conformance to ODP systems can be asserted. These relationships include transformation, refinement, conformance and consistency. This paper develops a formal interpretation of these concepts. In particular the paper defines a framework for checking the consistency of different specifications of the same ODP system. This framework is essential if FDT's are to be successfully employed in the development of ODP systems. In the second part of the paper, we present examples of consistency checking in both LOTOS and RAISE.