A visual requirements validation environment for the reverse engineering of formal specifications from rapid prototypes

  • Authors:

  • M. B. Ozcan;I. Morrey

  • Affiliations:

  • Computing & Research Centre, School of Computing and Management Sciences, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield S11 8HD, ENGLAND;Computing & Research Centre, School of Computing and Management Sciences, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield S11 8HD, ENGLAND

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
  • Year:
  • 1995

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Abstract

This paper describes a research project whose aim is the use of requirements visualisation techniques in the construction of an environment for the reverse engineering of validated formal specifications from rapid prototypes. The work will build on established research by the proposers in the animation of model-based and algebraic formal specifications.The report examines the current problems with requirements engineering and looks at solutions based on software prototyping and executable formal specifications. It is argued that prototypes built in this way can be too "formal", in the sense that the customer viewing the prototype cannot easily comprehend the results of execution. For these types of prototypes to be useful, the output must be transformed into a representation which is more amenable for comprehension, namely graphical visualisations and animation instead of cryptic mathematical expressions. In this context, the term "animation" normally refers to an executable version of a formal specification which can be used to demonstrate to the user that the specification is doing what it should. In other words, the animation is a program whose behaviour can be explored with a view to confirming the user's expectations. Our aim is to investigate techniques and a methodology for building this program prior to the specification, based on some initial informal requirements, and reverse engineering a formal specification from it. The product of the research programme will be a software environment to support this requirements visualisation, animation and reverse engineering approach.