The Basic Structure of XASM Programs: The XASM Component Model

In order to provide the full comfort of a modern programming language, pure ASMs lack a concept of modularization which is indispensable for structuring large-scale formalizations. Macros, which are normally used in the ASM literature to structure large ASM formalizations, only provide limited functionality with respect to the advantages one expects from a module concept. However, macros are a good means for ``ASM-programming-in-the-small'', but they fail to provide a basis for writing ASM formalizations that can be re-used in other formalizations.

Therefore, XASM uses a more powerful modularization concept which is based on the notion of a component as it is used in component-based systems (e.g. [27,30]).