Developing formal object-oriented requirements specifications: A model, tool and technique

Abstract

The creation of a requirements specification for systems development has always been a difficult problem and continues to be a problem in the object-oriented software development paradigm. The problem persists because there is a paucity of formal, object-oriented specification models that are seamlessly integrated into the development cycle and that are supported by automated tools. Here, we present a formal object-oriented specification model (OSS), which is an extension of an object-oriented analysis model (OSA), and which is supported by a tool (IPOST) that automatically generates a prototype from an OSA model instance, lets the user execute the prototype, and permits the user to refine the OSA model instance to generate a requirements specification. This technique leverages the benefits of a formal model, an object-oriented model, a seamless model, a graphical diagrammatic model, incremental development, and CASE tool support to facilitate the development of requirements specifications.