Abstract
In the area of software engineering there have been very few efforts to automate the translation from specifications written in natural language to the formal specification languages. Writing of the specifications in natural language is always depending on context and it is commonly vagueness; this represents the major reasons of the challenge. This paper discusses the design of a tool for translating a software specification written in natural language into a formal specification. We apply controlled natural language that limits the syntax and semantics when the natural language statements been written by proposing structured natural language (SNL) to avoid the ambiguity problem. The tool uses basic information about the operation schemas and statements describing the specification of the system written by a group of user collaboratively as input. The output of the tool is a translation and interpreting of the specification statements into equivalent statements in LATEX form, which are compiled to produce an equivalent statements in Z.
Highlights
The natural language has remained as practiced choice to specify the software specification because formal specification languages are not easy to master [1]
Background of SNL2Z: SNL2Z is a part of web-based system that has been developed in Faculty of Information Science and Technology, University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) to help a team of software specifiers to collaborate in preparing a formal software specification
Through the simple case study, Internal Telephone Directory taken from a book [4], we will show how SNL2Z translates the specification prepared in previous way into formal specification statements in LATEX form
Summary
The natural language has remained as practiced choice to specify the software specification because formal specification languages are not easy to master [1]. The requirements written in natural language has to be reinterpreted into a formal specification language[1], so that one can analyze the informal specification to reduce its ambiguity, and derive an efficient program which satisfies the specification [8]. Background of SNL2Z: SNL2Z is a part of web-based system that has been developed in Faculty of Information Science and Technology, University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) to help a team of software specifiers to collaborate in preparing a formal software specification. The drafter passes the draft document (written in LATEX form) of the specification of system state which consists of: basic types and state schemas, as well as propose a list of operation names to the rectifiers. The Drafter passes the basic types, state schemas and the operation names list for rectifying
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