Supporting Elicitation and Specification of Software Properties Through Patterns and Composite Propositions

Abstract

Prospec is a tool that assists practitioners in the elicitation and specification of system properties. Practitioners are guided by questions, definitions, and graphics. Prospec introduces the use of composite propositions to identify intended behavior when multiple conditions or events are considered. Multiple conditions or events may represent behavior such as sequences, concurrency, and non-determinism and may define the boundaries of scopes or type of patterns. Prospec is built upon the Specification Pattern System. The tool assists the analyst in making informed decisions about aspects of a specification that may have multiple interpretations. The end product of the tool is a formal specification in Future Interval Logic, Linear Temporal Logic, or Meta Event Definition Language.

Towards Support for Software Model Checking: Improving the Efficiency of Formal Specifications

“…The Property Specification tool (Prospec) [5][6][7] builds on the Specification Patterns System (SPS) [8,9] by facilitating the identification of SPS patterns and scopes as well as validation of specifications. SPS defines patterns and scopes to assist the practitioner in formally specifying software properties.…”

“…Mondragon et al [7,21] introduced composite propositions (CPs) classes to define the structure of multiple propositions to capture sequential and concurrent behavior. The work provided a CP taxonomy that can be used in the property elicitation and specification process.…”

“…The Property Specification (Prospec) [5][6][7] builds on the Property Specification Patterns system (SPS) [8,9], and it uses property pattern and scope to assist in the specification of formal properties in LTL as well as other languages. Patterns are high-level abstractions that provide descriptions of common properties, and scopes describe the extent of program execution over which the property holds.…”

“…This paper also shows an approach for proving the equivalence of different LTL formulas. Finally, this paper describes the impact that more efficient formulas have when using composite propositions [6] to define pattern and scope limits.…”

Generating Properties for Runtime Monitoring From Software Specification Patterns

“…A tool called Property Specification (Prospec) [1,2], which is built on the Specification Pattern System (SPS) [3] and composite propositions, provides visual and textual guidance for specifying properties of systems. Prospec steps the practitioner through elicitation and specification of properties and generates formal specifications in Future Interval Logic (FIL) and Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) that can be used by theorem provers and model checkers.…”