A formally grounded software specification method

A formally grounded software specification method

One of the goals of software engineering is to provide what is necessary to write relevant, legible, useful descriptions of the systems to be developed, which will be the basis of successful developments. This goal was addressed both from informal approaches (providing in particular visual notations) and formal ones (providing a formal sound semantic basis). Informal approaches are often driven...

Towards a Formally Grounded Software Development Method

Graph Grammar Engineering: A Software Specification Method

Graphs as conceptual data models are accepted and used in a wide range of different problem areas. Giving some examples we outline common aspects for modeling complex structures by graphs. We present a formal frame-work based on graph grammars to specify graph classes and the corresponding graph manipulations. We show that such a specification can be written in a systematic, engineering-like ma...

Formally Assessing Software Modifiability

An analytic framework termed cognitive dimensions is developed to provide formal definitions of dimensions for assessing the suitability of interactive systems for particular tasks. Cognitive dimensions is a psychological framework that provides broadbrush characterisations of interactive behaviours that are of particular relevance to ease of use. The framework also provides an effective termin...

Software Specification & Design Methods and Method Engineering

This article summarizes the state of the art in software speci cation & design methods, which assist developers in constructing the models of the problem domain and of the system and in writing requirements and design speci cations. The typical methods such as structured methods and object-oriented methods are summarized. The new discipline called \Method Engineering", engineering for construct...