Emulation Software for Executable Specifications

S. Gestegård

Master's Thesis, LU-CS-EX:99-6, Dept. of Computer Science, Lund Institute of Technology, Lund, Sweden. April 1999.

[Postscript] [pdf]

Abstract

Writing of specifications is a very important part of product development, and their correctness and consistency is essential for the continuing design process. The current method of writing specifications using natural language and different kinds of informal diagrams makes it hard to ensure the specifications' correctness, completeness and consistency. The goal of this project is to create a computer-aided environment that can help the writer of specifications to overcome these difficulties. By writing the specification in a formal language it is possible to execute the specification, allowing the user to experiment with the basic functionality of the application and to get direct feedback on how a change in the specification will affect the behavior of the application. In this thesis, we focus on studying specification of applications for interactive devices communicating via a Bluetooth radio link. We have created a formal specification language for describing the functionality of such devices as well as an interpreting emulator to execute specifications written in this language.