6.1 Meta-Requirements

Overall

• A Common Framework (CF) for algebraic specification and software development is to be designed, developed, and disseminated.
• The production of the CF is to be a collaborative effort, involving a large number of experts (30-50) from many different groups (20-30) working on algebraic specifications.
• In the short term (e.g., by 1997) the CF is to become accepted as an appropriate basis for a significant proportion of the research and development in algebraic specification.
• The CF is to include a uniform family of related specification languages, all with a consistent, user-friendly syntax and straightforward semantics. It is expected that some of the CF languages could replace existing specification languages.
• The CF is to be supported by concise reference manuals, users' guides, libraries of specifications, tools, and educational materials.
• In the longer term, the CF is to be made attractive for use in industrial contexts.
• The CF is to be available free of charge, both to academic institutions and to industrial companies. It is to be protected against appropriation (cf. GNU).

Functionality

The CF is to allow and be useful for:

• Algebraic specification of the functional requirements of software systems, for some significant class of software systems.
• Formal development of design specifications from requirements specifications, using some particular methods.
• Documenting the relation between informal statements of requirements and formal specifications.
• Verification of correctness of development steps from (formal) requirements to design specifications.
• Documenting the relation between design specifications and implementations in software.
• Exploration of the (logical) consequences of specifications: e.g., rewriting, theorem-proving, prototyping.
• Reuse of parts of specifications.
• Adjustment of specifications and developments to changes in requirements.
• Providing a library of useful specification modules.
• Providing a workbench of tools supporting the above.