Requirements-related fault prevention during the transformation from formal specifications to programs

Abstract

Software faults are costly to find and remove from programs. It is better to avoid inserting the faults in the first place. The authors identify requirements-related faults that can arise during the transformation of formal specifications into programs, analyse each to discover its causes, and propose corresponding fault prevention methods. The approach works by analysing a specification, decomposing it into specification fragments with different levels like components, determining the correct implementation order among the components, and enabling automated code generation for the components and other low-level specification fragments. The approach seeks to reduce the faults in programs significantly by guiding programmers to work effectively and productively. The authors evaluate the approach's performance experimentally and compare it to the performance of a fault-prevention method with industry applications.