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Methodologies to evolve formal specifications through refinement and retrenchment in an analysis–revision cycle

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Abstract

The development of requirement specifications is done by accumulating knowledge about the desired systems in a progressive manner. This process can be supported by an analysis–revision cycle, in which the analysis phase checks the correctness of a given specification, and the revision phase modifies it, in case some problems are detected. To date, the analysis and revision activities have been typically considered in isolation, resulting in ineffective support to the stakeholders’ work. In response to that, this article introduces methodologies to conduct an interactive and integrated approach, grounded on the formalization of two basic types of evolutions (refinements and retrenchments) over multi-valued specification and modeling formalisms. Evaluation results are included to show that this approach can indeed help the stakeholders identify and clarify requirements through different stages of development.

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Notes

  1. Obviously, no suggestion is made if \({{\mathcal{D}}}_{\rm entry}={{\mathcal{D}}}\) (first recursion).

  2. Admittedly, the intentional simplicity will make the expression of certain requirements somewhat artificial in later sections. A complete definition of SCTL, including real-time and fixpoint operators, macros and other artifacts that would make the notation more straightforward can be found in [14].

  3. This fact was proved in [7] without introducing the notion of MUS refinement.

  4. These systems are actually components of more complex ones, since they define the behavior of individual parties in multiuser interactive systems. The parallel composition of those behaviors (representing the concurrence of multiple users) yields MUS models whose state spaces are several degrees of magnitude bigger.

  5. The systems are sequential by nature, because their outputs depend on the history of events occurred from the initial state. Therefore, there is no direct relation between the number of states of the MUS models and the number/type of variables considered.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been partially supported by the Xunta de Galicia research project PGIDIT04PXIB32201PR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Telematics Engineering, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain

    Jorge García-Duque, José J. Pazos-Arias, Martín López-Nores, Yolanda Blanco-Fernández, Ana Fernández-Vilas, Rebeca P. Díaz-Redondo, Manuel Ramos-Cabrer & Alberto Gil-Solla

  2. ETSE Telecomunicación, Campus Universitario s/n, 36310, Vigo, Spain

    Martín López-Nores

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  1. Jorge García-Duque
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Correspondence to Martín López-Nores.

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García-Duque, J., Pazos-Arias, J.J., López-Nores, M. et al. Methodologies to evolve formal specifications through refinement and retrenchment in an analysis–revision cycle. Requirements Eng 14, 129–153 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-009-0074-z

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