Informal top-level specifications for trusted application systems

Presents some initial experiences in NRL's application system certification technology project. The project goal is to develop an approach to certifying US Navy application systems that must be trusted. The authors are conducting their research by participating in the certification of two NATO command and control systems targeted at the B3 class of the Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria. An important initial finding of this project is a working definition of the role that an informal or descriptive top-level specification plays in development of trusted application systems. Other initial experiences include the possibility of using the descriptive top-level specification as a preliminary specification and the identification of some easily corrected shortcomings of natural language descriptions. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part discusses the role of the descriptive top-level specification and the second part relates three initial experiences with descriptive top-level specifications.<>