Software Engineering Journal
Volume 7, Issue 5, September 1992
Volumes & issues:
Volume 7, Issue 5
September 1992
Software reuse: from text to hypertext
- Author(s): Roy Rada ; Weigang Wang ; Hafedh Mili ; Jurgen Heger ; Wolfgang Scherr
- Source: Software Engineering Journal, Volume 7, Issue 5, p. 311 –321
- DOI: 10.1049/sej.1992.0032
- Type: Article
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For software reuse, a wide range of software descriptions are exploited in the ESPRIT Practitioner Project. Word patterns and outlines constitute the conventional document-oriented descriptions, whereas thesauri and questionnaires form the hypertext-oriented descriptions. The Practitioner consortium has developed and tested a set of tools to support this wide range of approaches to software reuse. Furthermore, all the phases of reuse, i.e. organising, retrieving and reorganising, have been applied to documents from throughout the software life-cycle.
Specifications are (preferably) executable
- Author(s): Norbert E. Fuchs
- Source: Software Engineering Journal, Volume 7, Issue 5, p. 323 –334
- DOI: 10.1049/sej.1992.0033
- Type: Article
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The validation of specifications with respect to user requirements is extremely difficult. To ease the validation task and to give users immediate feedback on the behaviour of the future software, it was suggested that specifications should be made executable. However, Hayes and Jones [1] argue that executable specifications should be avoided because executability can restrict the expressiveness of specification langugages, and can adversely affect implementations. We argue for executable specifications by showing that non-executable formal specifications can be made executable on almost the same level of abstraction, and without essentially changing their structure. No new algorithms have to be introduced to get executability. Furthermore, we show that declarative specification languages combine high expressiveness and executability.
Application and benefits of formal methods in software development
- Author(s): Nico Plat ; Jan van Katwijk ; Hans Toetenel
- Source: Software Engineering Journal, Volume 7, Issue 5, p. 335 –346
- DOI: 10.1049/sej.1992.0034
- Type: Article
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Formal methods for software development receive much attention in research centres, but are rarely used in industry for the development of (large) software systems. One of the reasons is that little is known about the integration of formal methods in the software process, and the exact role of formal methods in the software life-cycle is still unclear. In this paper, a detailed examination is made of the application of, and the benefits resulting from, a generally applicable formal method (VDM) in a standard model for software development (DoD-STD-2167A). Currently, there is no general agreement on how formal methods should be used, but in order to analyse the use of formal methods in the software process, a clear view of such use is essential. Therefore, we show what is meant by ‘using a formal method’. The different activities of DoD-STD-2167A are analysed with regard to their suitability for applying VDM and the benefits that may result from applying VDM for that activity. Based on this analysis, an overall view on the usage of formal methods in the software process is formulated.
The TIPSE: an IPSE for teaching
- Author(s): M.B. Ratcliffe ; M.F. Bott ; T.J. Stotter-Brooks ; B.R. Whittle
- Source: Software Engineering Journal, Volume 7, Issue 5, p. 347 –356
- DOI: 10.1049/sej.1992.0035
- Type: Article
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This paper describes the support environment being developed at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, for use in teaching software engineering. The environment provides a fully integrated tool set that will eventually support all aspects of the software life-cycle. Modes of operation are provided to suit the needs of both naive and fairly sophisticated users. The environment has been developed as far as possible by using existing software.
When a software measure is not a measure
- Author(s): Norman Fenton
- Source: Software Engineering Journal, Volume 7, Issue 5, p. 357 –362
- DOI: 10.1049/sej.1992.0036
- Type: Article
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A recent interesting paper by Melton et al. [1] discussed finding measures which preserve intuitive orderings on software documents. Informally, if ≤ is such an ordering, then they argue that a measure M is a real-valued function defined on documents such that M(F) ≤ M(F′) whenever F ≤ F′. However, in measurement theory, this is only a necessary condition for a measure M. The representation condition for measurement additionally requires the converse; that F≤F′ whenever M(F) ≤ M(F′). Using the measurement theory definition of a measure, we show that Melton et al.'s examples, like McCabe's cyclomatic complexity [2] are not measures of the proposed intuitive document ordering after all. However, by dropping the restriction to real-valued functions, we show that it is possible to define a measure which characterises Melton et al.'s order relation; this provides a considerable strengthening of the results in Reference 1. More generally, we show that there is no single real-valued measure which can characterise any intuitive notion of ‘complexity’ of programs. The power of measurement theory is further illustrated in a critical analysis of some recent work by Weyuker [3] et al. on axioms for software complexity measures.
Integrating formal notations and systems analysis: using entity relationship diagrams
- Author(s): Fiona Polack
- Source: Software Engineering Journal, Volume 7, Issue 5, p. 363 –371
- DOI: 10.1049/sej.1992.0037
- Type: Article
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The paper looks at recent work using the information conveyed in entity relationship diagrams to produce state schemas in the formal notation Z. It proposes a draft technique for formalising an entity relationship diagram. The notations used are those of the structured analysis method, SSADM version 4, but the technique is more widely applicable. The benefits of integrating formal and structured specifications are discussed. The paper draws on similar work by Stepney [1] Semmens [2] and Redmond-Pyle [3].
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