Executable specifications and CASE

Gaskell, Craig; Phillips, R. J.

doi:10.1049/sej.1994.0023

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…One way to model and explore the intended emergent operational behavior of the system is with d iscrete event simulations such as those offered by using e xecutable specifications. Originally developed for use in software engineering, a n executable specification [11,12] is a specification designed as a discrete event simulation model of the operational architecture as defined to that point in the design process. Executable specifications can be simulated directly, without humans needing to implement a separate discrete event simulation.…”

Section: Emergent Attributesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is an even bigger gap between the types of models used in conceptual design and those used in the later phases of design. In software engineering, this gap is smaller, thus enabling the transformational approach to software engineering in which the executable specifications can be gradually replaced with the final code as portions of the final code are completed [11].…”

Section: Types Of Models For Systems Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Role and Limitations of Modeling and Simulation in Systems Design

Aughenbaugh

Paredis

2004

Computers and Information in Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To design today’s complex, multi-disciplinary systems, designers need a design method that allows them to systematically decompose a complex design problem into simpler sub-problems. Systems engineering provides such a framework. In an iterative, hierarchical fashion systems are decomposed into subsystems and requirements are allocated to these subsystems based on estimates of their attributes. In this paper, we investigate the role and limitations of modeling and simulation in this process of system decomposition and requirements flowdown. We first identify different levels of complexity in the estimation of system attributes, ranging from simple aggregation to complex emergent behavior. We also identify the main obstacles to the systems engineering decomposition approach: identifying coupling at the appropriate level of abstraction and characterizing and processing uncertainty. The main contributions of this paper are to identify these short-comings, present the role of modeling and simulation in overcoming these shortcomings, and discuss research directions for addressing these issues and expanding the role of modeling and simulation in the future.

show abstract

Section: Emergent Attributesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Types Of Models For Systems Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role and Limitations of Modeling and Simulation in Systems Design

Aughenbaugh

Paredis

2004

Computers and Information in Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This graphical nature, provided the customers are familiar with the specification language, lends itself quite well to a participatory analysis setting (Crane, 1993). Validation and verification of the requirements document is facilitated by executing the requirements model contained within the document (Fuchs 1992;Gaskell and Phillips 1994;Tate, 1990).…”

Section: Analysis Language Analysis Language Analysis Language Analys...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Place of User Enhanceability in User-Oriented Software Development

Mehandjiev

Bottaci

1998

Journal of Organizational and End User Computing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…This is called the real-value simulation, and contrasts with other specification simulators that only provide data flow simulation with queuing models. 9 After a simulation model is built, it can be executed and analyzed using ASADAL/SIM. The simulation model can be run in an interactive or batch mode.…”

Section: Features Of Asadal/simmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…EGS (Executable Graphical Specification) 9 is a CASE environment which uses DeMarco's DFD notation for describing functional models. The user augments the model with functional language code elements.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

ASADAL/SIM: an incremental multi-level simulation and analysis tool for real-time software specifications

Kang

Lee

et al. 1998

Softw: Pract. Exper.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SUMMARYDespite considerable advancement in software engineering methods during the past three decades, requirements engineering of large and complex software systems still remains a difficult and active research problem. One such difficulty lies in developing correct and useful methods for the validation and verification of real-time software specifications. One way of analyzing and validating/verifying software specifications is to mathematically derive or prove desired system properties based on formal specification languages. A full scale system analysis using such formal methods is limited in practice because of the required mathematical skills and computational costs. Formal methods are often used to check only a few very critical real-time properties. Simulation is a complementary approach to testing various system characteristics and validating user requirements. It is especially good for providing a rough picture of final system behavior. This paper presents ASADAL/SIM, a tool for multi-level simulation and analysis of real-time software specifications. It is a subsystem of a larger computer-aided real-time software development environment called ASADAL, and complements ASADAL/PROVER, another subsystem of ASA-DAL which is a formal verification module.1 With ASADAL/SIM, simulation primitives can be added to evolving specifications in order to assign stochastic behaviors to external entities and internal processes, and to build a simulation model. ASADAL/SIM can execute the model and, at the same time, demonstrate the final system behavior by graphically showing internal workings of the system; catch undesirable system behaviors with breakpoints; and present various analytical results and system statistics. ASADAL/SIM, following ASADAL's philosophies of hierarchical system modeling and early system validation, allows users to simulate 'evolving' specifications at different, mixed, and wide levels of detail. In particular, algorithmic details may be specified for low level behavioral blocks, and simulated with abstract entities yet to be refined to such a level. This facilitates the tracking of critical data values at the specification level, and eases the next transformation into code level implementation. With ASADAL/SIM, ASADAL becomes an effective and comprehensive supporting tool for various existing software engineering approaches, particularly top-down refinement and incremental development practices.

show abstract

Executable specifications and CASE

Cited by 13 publications

References 1 publication

The Role and Limitations of Modeling and Simulation in Systems Design

The Role and Limitations of Modeling and Simulation in Systems Design

The Place of User Enhanceability in User-Oriented Software Development

ASADAL/SIM: an incremental multi-level simulation and analysis tool for real-time software specifications

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About