High-order Software Research Articles

Verification of HOS software specification by a hierarchical software understanding approach

HOS (higher order software) methodology is very useful in the development of reliable software. However, for lack of an explicit and formal functional specification facility, HOS methodology, by its very nature, can only make the interface of HOS specification consistent and does not support any form of semantic verification. In this article, the formal functional specification mechanism based on the first-order prediate calculus is introduced, and semantic synthesis rules concerning HOS's primitive control structures OR, INCLUDE, and JOIN and cocontrol structures COOR, COJOIN, and COINCLUDE are given. Based on these semanic rules, a bottom-up hierarchical understanding method for HOS specification is presented, and its application to the verification of HOS specification is also discussed.

Higher Order Software—A Methodology for Defining Software

The key to software reliability is to design, develop, and manage software with a formalized methodology which can be used by computer scientists and applications engineers to describe and communicate interfaces between systems. These interfaces include: software to software; software to other systems; software to management; as well as discipline to discipline within the complete software development process. The formal methodology of Higher Order Software (HOS), specifically aimed toward large-scale multiprogrammed/multiprocessor systems, is dedicated to systems reliability. With six axioms as the basis, a given system and all of its interfaces is defined as if it were one complete and consistent computable system. Some of the derived theorems provide for: reconfiguration of real-time multiprogrammed processes, communication between functions, and prevention of data and timing conflicts.