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6.1 Meta-Requirements
The following meta-requirements are all open to discussion! Please suggest additional ones.
- 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).
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.
CoFI
: CoFI -- Version: -- November 16, 1999.
Comments to pdmosses@brics.dk
