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Is There Evolution Before Birth? Deterioration Effects of Formal Z Specifications

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Formal Methods and Software Engineering (ICFEM 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 6991))

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Abstract

Formal specifications are not an exception for aging. Furthermore, they stay valid resources only in the case when they have been kept up to date during all evolutionary changes taking place. As specifications are then not just written once, an interesting aspect is whether they do also deteriorate or not. In order to answer this question, this paper addresses the issues on various kinds of changes in the development of formal specifications and how they could be measured. For this, a set of semantic-based measures is introduced and then used in a longitudinal study, assessing the specification of the Web-Service Definition Language. By analyzing all 139 different revisions of it, it is shown that specifications can deteriorate and that it takes effort to keep them constantly at high quality. The results yield in a refined model of software evolution exemplifying these recurring changes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Engineering and Soft Computing, AAU Klagenfurt, Austria

    Andreas Bollin

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  1. Andreas Bollin
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Teesside University, UK

    Shengchao Qin

  2. LMAM and Department of Informatics, School of Mathematical Sciences,, Peking University, China

    Zongyan Qiu

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Bollin, A. (2011). Is There Evolution Before Birth? Deterioration Effects of Formal Z Specifications. In: Qin, S., Qiu, Z. (eds) Formal Methods and Software Engineering. ICFEM 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6991. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24559-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24559-6_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-24558-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-24559-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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