Integrating a formal specification course with a software projects course via an editing tool

Abstract

This paper reports on a two-course sequence for undergraduate students that provides them with an intensive course in formal specification methods and a traditional software design course. The specification course provides an appreciation for the use of rigorous specification methods within the software lifecycle. The manual nature of developing a formal specification provides the appropriate justification for the projects in the software design course in which the students create useful tools to aid the development of a formal specification. Within the project course, the students developed the first prototype of a graphical editor for building Z specifications. We discuss the building of the editing tool and its integration into the software engineering curriculum.