Abstract

Formal requirements specifications play an important role in enhancing the reliability and effectiveness of software development. They provide a precise, unambiguous standard for the construction of a system and raise the confidence in a planned system by enabling a proper mathematical analysis of its requirements. The construction of formal specifications can be effectively supported by computer based tools if those tools are suitably tuned to the logic of composing specifications. In this paper we discuss the possibility of providing 'intelligent' assistance during the incremental construction of well designed and reliable algebraic specifications of complex (software) systems. Based on a model of the specification process, we show how the demand to preserve certain properties in the evolving specification can be exploited to design functions of a specification tool which assist the process in an effective manner.

Highlights

  • Requirements analysis is the phase in software development where the characteristics of a desired system are determined and specified

  • Be extremely useful since it helps to ensure that the 'right' requirements go into the specification which is crucial for a successful outcome of the requirements analysis task

  • In this paper we outlined a model of the process of constructing formal requirements specifications

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Summary

Introduction

Requirements analysis is the phase in software development where the characteristics of a desired system are determined and specified. More sophisticated systems include automated theorem proving tools to help specifiers to carry out a mathematical analysis of the requirements in order to assess their validity This is a central issue in requirements analysis and because of the importance of this task a considerable amount of the work invested into specification tools centred around this problem. By that we mean that the system has capabilities to guide and support a user to conduct a systematic requirements acquisition process which is based on suitable models of building formal theories Such support would, be extremely useful since it helps to ensure that the 'right' requirements go into the specification which is crucial for a successful outcome of the requirements analysis task. This design is realised as part of the specification tool ASPECT [6] developed by the author

Tool Support in Incremental Specification
Well-sorted Specifications
Maximal Fit
New Operations
Conclusion
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