A user friendly specification environment for FDT and its application to LOTOS

The authors propose a new specification methodology and environment named the model based programming (MBP) environment. The objective of MBP is to design a user-friendly specification environment for formal description techniques (FDTs) such as LOTOS and SDL. MBP consists of the following tools: (1) mechanism for requirement acquisition, (2) tutor, (3) formal specification description model and (4) translator to FDTs. (1) acquires user requirements based on user-friendly tools, (2) gives information to users about MBP and FDTs, (3) represents a user requirement as a model based on the FDT being used, and (4) translates the user requirement represented in (3) to a FDT specification. By using MBP, a nonexpert user who only has a basic knowledge about the design concepts and the outline of each FDT can easily describe the FDT specification. MBP-1 has been implemented as a pilot system.<
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