{"title":"Supporting the selection of software requirements","authors":"Joachim Karlsson, K. Ryan","doi":"10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501157","url":null,"abstract":"The choice of candidate requirements for implementation is a primary determinant of customer satisfaction. It is argued that a set of requirements should be chosen which reflects both the importance and the estimated cost of each candidate requirement. A contribution-based method is proposed which determines importance and estimates cost and industrial experience in applying this method is reported. The results indicate that the contribution of candidate requirements can vary by orders of magnitude. By applying the method, software managers are in a position to select requirements for implementation based on each candidate requirement's contribution.","PeriodicalId":244084,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123918137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Design decision trees","authors":"A. Ran, Juha Kuusela","doi":"10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501163","url":null,"abstract":"The paper proposes a formalism to be used as a systematic approach to incrementally document, refine, organise and reuse the architectural knowledge for software design. The formalism is a hierarchical organisation of design patterns into a design decision tree (DDT) that is a partial ordering of design decisions put in the context of the problem requirements and the constraints imposed by earlier decisions. Our model supports the representation of the essential problems that recur in the domain, knowledge of alternative solutions to these problems and the implications of the solutions. This model integrates architectural knowledge of software design into a software development process.","PeriodicalId":244084,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121180465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A mathematical toolbox for the software architect","authors":"J. Fiadeiro, T. Maibaum","doi":"10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501146","url":null,"abstract":"It is suggested that category theory provides the right level of mathematical abstraction to address languages for describing software architectures. Contrarily to most other formalisations of SA concepts, category theory does not promote any particular formalism for component and connector description but provides instead the very semantics of the concepts that are related to the gross modularisation of complex systems like \"interconnection\": \"configuration\", \"instantiation\" and \"composition\": Two examples, a category of programs for a parallel program design language and a category of temporal logic specifications, together with comparisons with other work, namely by R. Allen and D. Garlan (1994), and M. Moriconi and X. Qian (1994), are adduced to justify this claim.","PeriodicalId":244084,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124349316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Software package requirements and procurement","authors":"Anthony Finkelsteiin, G. Spanoudakis, M. Ryan","doi":"10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501156","url":null,"abstract":"The paper outlines the problems of specifying requirements and deploying these requirements in the procurement of software packages. Despite the fact that software construction de novo is the exception rather than the rule, little or no support for the task of formulating requirements to support assessment and selection among existing software packages has been developed. We analyse the problems arising in this process and review related work. We outline the key components of a programme of research in this area.","PeriodicalId":244084,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114334918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A comedy of errors: the London Ambulance Service case study","authors":"A. Finkelstein, J. Dowell","doi":"10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501141","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provides an introduction to the IWSSD-8 (8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design) case study-the \"Report of the Inquiry Into the London Ambulance Service\". The paper gives an overview of the case study and provides a brief summary. It considers how the case study can be used to orient discussion at the workshop and provide a bridge between the various contributions.","PeriodicalId":244084,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design","volume":"32 7","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120870959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To be and not to be: on managing inconsistency in software development","authors":"B. Nuseibeh","doi":"10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501161","url":null,"abstract":"The development of software systems involves the detection and handling of inconsistencies. These inconsistencies arise in system requirements, design specifications and, quite often in the descriptions that form the final implemented software product. The paper presents a critical review of approaches that explicitly tolerate and manage inconsistencies, and explores different kinds of inconsistencies that arise during different stages of software development. Managing inconsistency refers not only to the detection and removal of inconsistencies, but also to activities that facilitate continued development in their presence. Such activities include procedures for controlled amelioration or avoidance of inconsistency, which in turn may require analysis and reasoning in the presence of inconsistency.","PeriodicalId":244084,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127946674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
R. Schwanke, Veronika A. Strack, Thomas Werthmann-Auzinger
{"title":"Industrial software architecture with Gestalt","authors":"R. Schwanke, Veronika A. Strack, Thomas Werthmann-Auzinger","doi":"10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501164","url":null,"abstract":"The architecture of a software system specifies, among other things, its decomposition into parts and the communication between those parts. The structure of this decomposition and interconnection is separable from the protocols (types and sequencing) of communication. A language for specifying this structure and a toolset for checking consistency between structure specifications and code would provide substantial benefits to practicing industrial software architects. Gestalt is an architecture language for specifying structure, with separate, partial support for protocol specifications. The Gestalt toolset checks structural consistency between the architecture and the code. It specifies and checks protocol type compatibility at the interfaces, using the implementation language and tools (e.g. compiler). It provides annotation support for sequencing and other architectural information.","PeriodicalId":244084,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design","volume":"116 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116501033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards a formal specification method for graphical user interfaces using modularized graph grammars","authors":"M. Goedicke, B. Sucrow","doi":"10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501147","url":null,"abstract":"Well designed graphical user interfaces offer a high potential to increase the productivity of human users. The necessary condition for such a good performance is that the user interface represents the semantics of the underlying application in a clear and comprehensible way. This means, especially, that not only syntactical layout but also semantic consistency conditions between the various interaction objects have to be presented in a graphical user interface appropriately. This is usually termed semantic feedback. Many representation schemes have been proposed to express the properties of graphical man machine interfaces. However, many of them concentrate on control flow design and do not easily scale up to realistic problems. We propose a graph and graph grammar based approach which addresses the problem of semantic consistency of dialogs in graphical user interfaces. The main emphasis lies on an appropriate specification of the consistency conditions between the various graphical interaction objects of a man machine interface. We also propose a modularization technique in order to cope with large systems. We show the expressiveness and modularization features of our approach which is based on an analysis of the relationships between the various graphical interaction objects and conclude with remarks on future work.","PeriodicalId":244084,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design","volume":"388 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126741444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"PDP: programming a programmable design process","authors":"S. Sutton, L. Osterweil","doi":"10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501166","url":null,"abstract":"We have been developing PDP, a system for programming the process of designing software that is based on G. Booch (1994) object oriented design. Process programming can help in capturing and managing the inherent complexities of design processes and products, while programmability is necessary to accommodate the dynamic and creative aspects of design. PDP views the design process as comprising process steps, product artifacts, and execution resources. The process is multi user and multi role. The control model includes both proactive and reactive elements. Explicit consistency conditions interrelate product state and process control. Issues that arise in the programming of PDP include the integration of proactive and reactive control, the capturing of interrelations among steps, artifacts, and constraints, the identification of consistency conditions for design products and their implications for process control, and the accommodation of inconsistency and indeterminacy in evaluating design product state. Programmability is intended to provide organizations, managers, and developers with degrees of structured flexibility that are appropriate for their roles in the design process. A number of issues arise with the introduction of programmability, eg., what distinguishes different design processes and their variants? What is a legal design process or product and to what extent can it be varied? What controls should be available to process managers and to design engineers?.","PeriodicalId":244084,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design","volume":"83 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126179583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A survey of architecture description languages","authors":"P. Clements","doi":"10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSSD.1996.501143","url":null,"abstract":"Architecture description languages (ADLs) are emerging as viable tools for formally representing the architectures of systems. While growing in number, they vary widely in terms of the abstractions they support and analysis capabilities they provide. Further, many languages not originally designed as ADLs serve reasonably well at representing and analyzing software architectures. This paper summarizes a taxonomic survey of ADLs that is in progress. The survey characterizes ADLs in terms of: the classes of systems they support; the inherent properties of the languages themselves; and the process and technology support they provide to represent, refine, analyze, and build systems from an architecture. Preliminary results allow us to draw conclusions about what constitutes an ADL, and how contemporary ADLs differ from each other.","PeriodicalId":244084,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124812729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}