Abstract
Software engineering, like any other engineering field, needs to use formal methods to prove the reliability of its products and optimise their production and maintenance. In order to do that, software specification needs to be expressed in a language whose vocabulary, syntax and semantics are formally defined. These languages can be a federating formalism in information systems for data structures and dynamics. Formal specifications may then be automatically processed and software tools can be built to assist their development. Nevertheless, little effort has been devoted by research to tool support, yet such support is essential if specifications are to be used in industry. Within this perspective, we propose a support tool that uses tan extended Entity-Relationship model and a rule language as an interface for developing formal software specifications.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
J.R. Abria, ‘The specification language Z: Basic library', Oxford University. Programming Res. Group, 1980.
J.R. Abrial, “The B method”, to be edited, 26, rue des plantes, Paris.
J.R. Abrial, “The B notation”, A CNAM course Notes, Paris, January–June 1994.
F.L. Bauer, B. Möller, H. Partsch, P. Pepper, “Formal program construction by transformations — Computer Aided, Intuition Guided programming ”, IEEE Trans. Soft. Eng., Vol 15, No 2, Feb 1989.
H.K.Berg, W.E.Boebert, W.R.Franta, T.G.Moher, “Formal methods of program verification and specification”, Prentice-Hall, 1982.
M.Bouzeghoub, E.Metais, L.Leborgne, F.Hazi, “A Design Tool for Object Oriented Databases”, Proceed, of the 2nd Conference on Advanced Systems Engineering (CAISE90), Stockholm, Sweden, May 1990.
M.Bouzeghoub, E.Metais, “Semantic Modelling of Object Oriented Databases”, Proceed, of the Internat. Conf on Very Large Database (VLDB91), Barcelona Spain, Sept 1991.
C.M.Chao, “A Rapid Prototyping Methodology for Conceptual Database Design Using the Executable Semantic Data Model”, Technical Report #90-03, Department of Computer Science, The university of Iowa, 1990.
P.P. Chen, “The Entity-Relationship Model, Toward a Unified View of Data”, ACM Transactions on Database Systems, Vol. 1, No l, Mars 1976, pp. 9–36.
U. Dayal & al, “The HIP AC Project: Combining Active Databases and Timing Constraints ”, SIGMOD Record, Vol. 17, No.1, March 1988.
Futatsugi K., Goguen J.A., Jouannaud J., Meseguer J., 1985, ‘Principles of OBJ2', Proc. of the Annual Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, 1985, ACM 52–66.
J.A.Goguen,J. Meseguer & DPlaisted, ‘Programming with parameterized abstract objects in OBJ. Theory & Practice of Software Technology, Ferrari D., Bologuani M & J. Goguen, ed North-Holland, 1983, pp 163–193.
J.V. Guttag, J.J. Horning, J.M. Wing, “The Larch Family of Specification Langages”, IEEE Soft., Vol 2, No 5, pp24–36, 1985.
Hayes. ‘Specification case studies', London, Prentice-Hall, 1987.
Clones, ‘Software development: a rigorous approach', London, Prentice-Hall, 1980.
C. Jones.'Systematic software development using VDM', London, Prentice-hall, 1986.
P. Loucopoulos, C.Theodoulis, B.Wangler, “The Entity Relationship Time Model and the Conceptual Rule Language”, Proceeding of the 10th inter. Conf. on the Entity Relationship Approach, October 1991, California, pp. 181–204.
J.M. Smith, D.C.P. Smith, “Database Abstractions: Aggregation and Generalization”, ACM Transactions on Database Systems, Vol. 2, No 2, June 1977, pp. 105–133.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Nagui-Raïss, N. (1994). A formal software specification tool using the entity-relationship model. In: Loucopoulos, P. (eds) Entity-Relationship Approach — ER '94 Business Modelling and Re-Engineering. ER 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 881. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58786-1_88
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58786-1_88
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-58786-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49100-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive