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Automated formal specification generation and refinement from requirement documents

Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society volume 14, pages 87–106 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

The automatic generation of formal specifications from requirements suppresses the complexity of formal models manual creation and reveals the immediate benefits of its usage, such as the possibility to carry out refinements, and property verification, which contributes to project cost reduction and quality improvement. This paper proposes a Controlled Natural Language (CNL), a subset of English, used to write use case specifications according to a template. From these use cases a complete strategy and tools enable the generation of process algebraic formal models in the CSP notation. We define templates that represent requirements at different levels of abstraction, capturing different views of the system behavior. Moreover, a refinement notion is defined to connect the generated CSP models through an event mapping relation between abstract and concrete models. This notion is further applied to detail use case specifications and to automate its execution.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mobile Devices R&D Motorola Industrial Ltda, Rod SP 340 Km 128,7, A 13820 000, Jaguariuna, SP, Brazil

    Gustavo Cabral

  2. Centro de Informática CIn, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco — UFPE, Caixa Postal 7851, 50732-970, Recife, PE, Brazil

    Gustavo Cabral & Augusto Sampaio

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  1. Gustavo Cabral
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  2. Augusto Sampaio
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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Cabral, G., Sampaio, A. Automated formal specification generation and refinement from requirement documents. J Braz Comp Soc 14, 87–106 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03192554

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