Recently, many formal methods, such as the SCR (Software Cost Reduction) requirements method, have been proposed for improving the quality of software specifications. Although improved specifications are valuable, the ultimate objective of software development is to produce software that satisfies its requirements. To evaluate the correctness of a software implementation, one can apply black-box testing to determine whether the implementation, given a sequence of system inputs, produces the correct system outputs. This paper describes a specification-based method for constructing a suite of test sequences, where a test sequence is a sequence of inputs and outputs for testing a software implementation. The test sequences are derived from a tabular SCR requirements specification containing diverse data types, i.e., integer, boolean, and enumerated types. Prom the functions defined in the SCR specification, the method forms a collection of predicates called branches, which "cover" all possible software behaviors described by the specification. Based on these predicates, the method then derives a suite of test sequences by using a model checker's ability to construct counterexamples. The paper presents the results of applying our method to four specifications, including a sizable component of a contractor specification of a real system.

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This paper presents a model‐driven software process suitable to develop a set of integrated tools around a formal method. This process exploits concepts and technologies of the Model‐driven Engineering (MDE) approach, such as metamodelling and automatic generation of software artifacts from models. We describe the requirements to fulfill and the development steps of this model‐driven process. As a proof‐of‐concept, we apply it to the Finite State Machines and we report our experience in engineering a metamodel‐based language and a toolset for the Abstract State Machine formal method. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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We advocate the need for automated support to System Requirement Analysis in the development of time-and safety-critical computer-based systems. To this end we pursue an approach based on deductive analysis: high-level, real-world entities and notions, such as events, states, finite variability, cause-effect relations, are modeled through the temporal logic TRIO, and the resulting deductive system is implemented by means of the theorem prover PVS. Throughout the paper, the constructs and features of the deductive system are illustrated and validated by applying them to the well-known example of the Generalized Railway Crossing.

Abstract. We present CoMA (Conformance Monitoring by Abstract State Machines), a specification-based approach and its supporting tool for runtime monitoring of Java software. Based on the information obtained from code execution and model simulation, the conformance of the concrete implementation is checked with respect to its formal specification given in terms of Abstract State Machines. At runtime, undesirable behaviors of the implementation, as well as incorrect specifications of the system behavior are recognized. The technique we propose makes use of Java annotations, which link the concrete implementation to its formal model, without enriching the code with behavioral information contained only in the abstract specification. The approach fosters the separation between implementation and specification, and allows the reuse of specifications for other purposes (formal verification, simulation, model-based testing, etc.).

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