From Formal Speci cations to Natural Language: A Case Study

Formal descriptions, while diicult for most human readers to understand, are convenient for specifying large software systems, where completeness and consistency are important issues. Informal speciications can ooer advantages in readability, but ambiguities and contradictions are unavoidable side-eeects. Since a speciication often acts as a formal contract between the software developer and the customer, it is essential that both sides be able to fully understand the speci-cation document. Systems have been proposed which help the software client better understand the speciication by automatically paraphrasing it in natural language. Metaview is a customizable metasystem that facilitates the construction of software speciica-tion environments that can be used to support software speciication tasks. This paper describes a strategy for producing natural language descriptions of formal software requirements speciica-tions developed using Metaview speciication environments. A case study demonstrates, using the Object Modeling Technique speciication methodology as an example, how the system generates a textual description from a database of software requirements.