research-article

Developing and debugging algebraic specifications for Java classes

Authors:

Johannes Henkel,

Christoph Reichenbach,

Amer DiwanAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Volume 17, Issue 3

Article No.: 14, Pages 1 - 37

https://doi.org/10.1145/1363102.1363105

Published: 27 June 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Modern programs make extensive use of reusable software libraries. For example, a study of a number of large Java applications shows that between 17% and 30% of the classes in those applications use container classes defined in the java.util package. Given this extensive code reuse in Java programs, it is important for the interfaces of reusable classes to be well documented. An interface is well documented if it satisfies the following requirements: (1) the documentation completely describes how to use the interface; (2) the documentation is clear; (3) the documentation is unambiguous; and (4) any deviation between the documentation and the code is machine detectable. Unfortunately, documentation in natural language, which is the norm, does not satisfy the above requirements. Formal specifications can satisfy them but they are difficult to develop, requiring significant effort on the part of programmers.

To address the practical difficulties with formal specifications, we describe and evaluate a tool to help programmers write and debug algebraic specifications. Given an algebraic specification of a class, our interpreter generates a prototype that can be used within an application like a regular Java class. When running an application that uses the prototype, the interpreter prints error messages that tell the developer in which way the specification is incomplete or inconsistent with a hand-coded implementation of the class. We use case studies to demonstrate the usefulness of our system.

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Cited By

Angius NStefaneas P(2024)The logical structure of modular semantic theories of software systemsMetaphilosophy10.1111/meta.1270155:3(440-456)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12701
Mariano BReese JXu SNguyen TQiu XFoster JSolar-Lezama A(2019)Program synthesis with algebraic library specificationsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33605583:OOPSLA(1-25)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2019
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Index Terms

Developing and debugging algebraic specifications for Java classes
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Designing software
      1. Requirements analysis
    2. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology Volume 17, Issue 3

June 2008

133 pages

ISSN:1049-331X

EISSN:1557-7392

DOI:10.1145/1363102

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 June 2008

Accepted: 01 April 2007

Revised: 01 June 2006

Received: 01 September 2004

Published in TOSEM Volume 17, Issue 3

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Cited By

Angius NStefaneas P(2024)The logical structure of modular semantic theories of software systemsMetaphilosophy10.1111/meta.1270155:3(440-456)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12701
Mariano BReese JXu SNguyen TQiu XFoster JSolar-Lezama A(2019)Program synthesis with algebraic library specificationsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33605583:OOPSLA(1-25)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3360558
Nybom KAshraf APorres I(2018)A Systematic Mapping Study on API Documentation Generation Approaches2018 44th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA)10.1109/SEAA.2018.00081(462-469)Online publication date: Aug-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/SEAA.2018.00081
Pandita RTaneja KWilliams LTung T(2016)ICON: Inferring Temporal Constraints from Natural Language API Descriptions2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME.2016.59(378-388)Online publication date: Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2016.59
Wang SLo DJiang LMaoz SBudi A(2015)Scalable Parallelization of Specification Mining Using Distributed ComputingThe Art and Science of Analyzing Software Data10.1016/B978-0-12-411519-4.00021-5(623-648)Online publication date: 2015
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-411519-4.00021-5
Goffi AGorla AMattavelli APezzè MTonella PCheung SOrso AStorey M(2014)Search-based synthesis of equivalent method sequencesProceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/2635868.2635888(366-376)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2014
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Ghezzi CMocci ASangiorgio M(2014)Synthesis of Infinite-State Abstractions and Their Use for Software ValidationSpecification, Algebra, and Software10.1007/978-3-642-54624-2_14(276-295)Online publication date: 2014
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54624-2_14
Li KReichenbach CSmaragdakis YYoung MMeyer BBaresi LMezini M(2013)Second-order constraints in dynamic invariant inferenceProceedings of the 2013 9th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/2491411.2491457(103-113)Online publication date: 18-Aug-2013
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Samimi HHicks RFogel AMillstein TPezzè MHarman M(2013)Declarative mockingProceedings of the 2013 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/2483760.2483790(246-256)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2013
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Pandita RXiao XZhong HXie TOney SParadkar AGlinz MMurphy GPezzè M(2012)Inferring method specifications from natural language API descriptionsProceedings of the 34th International Conference on Software Engineering10.5555/2337223.2337319(815-825)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2012
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