Testing is an important means to ensure the quality of software systems. Contract specification can be used to formally specify the cluster level of object-oriented software, which can then be tested using TACCLE, an advanced methodology for object-oriented testing. The use of formal specifications as a testing base has many advantages. However, such specifications are not easily understood and...

often written right on the drawings. These might include a schedule of doors and windows; the type, grade, and color of the roofing material; and the like. For larger projects, the specs are provided as a separate part of the contract documents. The drawings and the specs are cross-referenced, with the basic principle that spatial relationships and dimensions belong in the drawings, while descr...

The USL/DBMS NASA/PC R&D Working Paper Series contains a collection of formal and informal reports representing results of PC-based research and development activities being conducted by the Center for Advanced Computer Studies of the University of Southwestern Louisiana pursuant t o the specifications of National Aeronautics and Space Administration Contract Number NASW-3846 and NASA Training ...

PSFd (Process Specification Formalism Draft) is a Formal Description Technique developed for specifying concurrent systems. PSFd supports the modular construction of specifications and parameterization of modules. As semantics for PSFd a combination of initial algebra semantics and operational semantics for concurrent processes is used. This report is intended to give a brief introduction to th...

We present an agile approach to Specification-Driven Development, which combines features of Test-Driven Development and the plan-based approach of Design-by-Contract. We argue that both tests and contracts are different types of specifications, and both are useful and complementary for building high quality software. We conclude that it is useful for being able to switch between writing tests ...

We describe steps required for realizing QoS for the metro Ethernet services, including classification of Customer-VLAN (C-VLAN) traffic, relevant traffic contract specifications per C-VLAN at the User to Network Interface (UNI), appropriate buffer management and scheduling of the queues at the nodes, and admission control and traffic engineering geared towards multipoint services. General func...

Distributed software development raises new software engineering challenges resulting from the difficulty of making several teams cooperate across different countries, time zones and cultures. These obstacles can lead to critical delays or even failures. One of the most effective techniques for overcoming them is to improve the quality of software specifications. Our experience with a distribut...

UML provides very little support for modelling evolvable or reusable specifications and designs. To cope with this problem, the UML needs to be extended with support for reuse and evolution of model components. As a first step, this paper enhances the UML metamodel with the “reuse contract” formalism to deal with evolution of collaborating class components. Such a formal semantics for reuse all...

The USL/DBMS NASA/PC R&D Working Paper Series contains a collection of formal and informal reports representing results of PC-based research and development activities being conducted by the Center for Advanced Computer Studies of the University of Southwestern Louisiana pursuant t o the specifications of National Aeronautics and Space Administration Contract Number NASW-3846 and NASA Training ...

Contracts are a form of lightweight formal specification embedded in the program text. Being executable parts of the code, they encourage programmers to devote proper attention to specifications, and help maintain consistency between specification and implementation as the program evolves. The present study investigates how contracts are used in the practice of software development. Based on an...