Visualization of Formal Specifications

Formal specification techniques provide precise and analyzable software specifications. However, formal notations provided by most formal specification techniques are not easy to use and understand for most people. Our approach counters this difficulty by visualizing formal specifications. In this paper, we use various diagrams to visualize a Z specification. In our work both static and dynamic aspects of formal specifications including complex constraints are included in the visualization scope. This is in contrast to other work that develops visual representations of formal specifications, without visualizing the complex constraints in the mathematical notation. Our work also supports a mechanical translation process from Z specifications to diagrams by providing transformation rules between the two representations. Representing a Z specification using various diagrams should enhance the readability and the understandability of the Z specification, and should make Z specifications more understandable for non-specialists.