Formal specification of software systems has been very promising. Critics against the end
results of formal methods, that is, producing quality software products, is certainly rare. Instead,
reasons have been formulated to justify why the adoption of the technique in industry
remains limited. Some of the reasons are:
• Steap learning curve; formal techniques are said to be hard to use.
• Lack of a step-by-step construction mechanism and poor guidance.
• Difficulty to integrate the technique into the existing software processes.
Z is, arguably, one of the successful formal specification techniques that was extended to
Object-Z to accommodate object-orientation. The Z notation is based on first-order logic
and a strongly typed fragment of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. Some attempts have been
made to couple Z with semi-formal notations such as UML. However, the case of coupling
Object-Z (and also Z) and the Use Case Maps (UCMs) notation is still to be explored.
A Use Case Map (UCM) is a scenario-based visual notation facilitating the requirements
definition of complex systems. A UCM may be generated either from a set of informal
requirements, or from use cases normally expressed in natural language. UCMs have the
potential to bring more clarity into the functional description of a system. It may furthermore
eliminate possible errors in the user requirements. But UCMs are not suitable to reason
formally about system behaviour.
In this dissertation, we aim to demonstrate that a UCM can be transformed into Z and
Object-Z, by providing a transformation framework. Through a case study, the impact of
using UCM as an intermediate step in the process of producing a Z and Object-Z specification
is explored. The aim is to improve on the constructivity of Z and Object-Z, provide more
guidance, and address the issue of integrating them into the existing Software Requirements
engineering process. / Computer Science / M. Sc. (Computer Science) / D. Phil. (Computer Science)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/5621 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Dongmo, Cyrille |
| Contributors | Van der Poll, John Andrew |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | 1 online resource (xviii, 224 leaves) : ill. |
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