Transforming System Requirements into Model Checking Specifications

Question: Discuss about A systematic approach to transforming system requirements into model checking specifications? Answer: Summary The software industry has been afflicted by the volatile, ambiguous, inaccurate and incomplete requirements since its emergence. The confluence of formal methods and development based on model proposes innovators of the critical-safety systems a strong and a new access for the validation of necessities at the early stage. This particular paper explains a case study that had been conducted to adjudicate if the use of formal methods could validate the system requirements at a reasonable cost in the lifecycle. Quite a few safety and functional requirements were captured for logic of Flight Guidance System (Aceituna, Do and Srinivasan 2014). They were written in natural language or shall statements. The model was formally written in RSML language. Several errors were identified in both the RSML as well as the original language. This proved that the formal models can be used for writing realistic or sensible systems and they can also be used to identify the errors before the implementatio n of the process. Opinion It can be said that the creation of RSML model has enhanced the informal requirements and this process involved in verifying the formal properties helped in identifying the errors in both the RSML model and the original requirements. In real systems, there would be many requirements of these models. As a result, the models would be large as well as complex. These models need to be organized to be robust and readable in the changing phases and need to be reused. It is learnt that there are two known styles of the process of formal specification constructive and axiomatic specification styles (Lobet et al. 2015). Both the styles have advantages as well as disadvantages depending on the process of usage of the specification styles. However, the present day use of the tools of formal method is very useful, it can be used to solve the industrial problems, and they can be quite productive. Limitations The most important limitation of the system is the cost effectiveness. The initial experiments of the process of formal verification have been quite costly because of the use of techniques such as proving of theorem, which required significant time as well as expertise. The maximum cost was incurred on the creation of the RSML model of the Flight Guidance System. On the other hand, the constructive specification style has a disadvantage. It makes the readers biased towards a specific implementation (Yu and Lau 2012). Similarly, a specification, which is property oriented or axiomatic, can be more difficult and problematic to understand as well as write. Conclusion and Recommendations It is a very useful system and can be practically used. Therefore, the cost incurrence can be ignored keeping in mind the advantages of the system. The constructive system can be used in the basic programming languages such as Ada and C. It can be used for future use with few recommendations. Stronger techniques of abstraction will be required to decrease or reduce the problems and they can be further verified with the use of model checkers. The models need to be modified to identify the proof properties and strategies that can have an automatic generation from the model. References Acceituna, D., Do, H. and Srinivasan, S., 2014, May. A systematic approach to transforming system requirements into model checking specifications. InCompanion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering(pp. 165-174). ACM. Lobet, G., Pound, M.P., Diener, J., Pradal, C., Draye, X., Godin, C., Javaux, M., Leitner, D., Meunier, F., Nacry, P. and Pridmore, T.P., 2015. Root system markup language: toward a unified root architecture description language.Plant Physiology,167(3), pp.617-627. Yu, Y.T. and Lau, M.F., 2012. Fault-based test suite prioritization for specification-based testing.Information and Software Technology,54(2), pp.179-202.