From scenarios to code: an air traffic control case study

Two high profile workshops at OOPSLA and ICSE, an IEEE Computer article by David Harel and a growing number of research papers have all suggested algorithms that translate scenarios of a system's behavior into state machines. One of the uses of such algorithms is in the transition from requirements scenarios to component design. To date, however, most efforts have concentrated on the algorithmic details of the proposed translations. Less work has been done on evaluating these algorithms on a realistic case study. In this paper, we do exactly that for the algorithm presented in [10]. Our study is a component of an air traffic advisory system developed at NASA Ames Research Center.