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Designing Specification Languages for Process Control Systems: Lessons Learned and Steps to the Future?

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Software Engineering — ESEC/FSE ’99 (ESEC 1999, SIGSOFT FSE 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1687))

Abstract

Previously, we defined a blackbox formal system modeling language called RSML (Requirements State Machine Language). The language was developed over several years while specifying the system requirements for a collision avoidance system for commercial passenger aircraft. During the language development, we received continual feed- back and evaluation by FAA employees and industry representatives, which helped us to produce a specification language that is easily learned and used by application experts.

Since the completion of the RSML project, we have continued our re- search on specification languages. This research is part of a larger effort to investigate the more general problem of providing tools to assist in developing embedded systems. Our latest experimental toolset is called SpecTRM (Specification Tools and Requirements Methodology), and the formal specification language is SpecTRM-RL (SpecTRM Requirements Language).

This paper describes what we have learned from our use of RSML and how those lessons were applied to the design of SpecTRM-RL.We discuss our goals for SpecTRM-RL and the design features that support each of these goals.

This work has been partially supported by NSF grants CCR-9624324 and CCR-9615088.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aeronautics and Astronautics Dept., MIT, Room 33-406, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA, 02139-4307, USA

    Nancy G. Leveson & Jon Damon Reese

  2. Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Minnesota, 4-192 EE/CS Building, 200 Union Street S.E., Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Mats P. E. Heimdahl & Jon Damon Reese

Authors
  1. Nancy G. Leveson
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  2. Mats P. E. Heimdahl
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  3. Jon Damon Reese
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Informatik (IAM), Universität Bern, Neubrückstr. 10, CH-3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Oscar Nierstrasz

  2. ONERA Centre de Toulouse, DPRS/SAE, 2, Ave. E. Belin, F-31055, Toulouse Cedex, France

    Michel Lemoine

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Leveson, N.G., Heimdahl, M.P.E., Reese, J.D. (1999). Designing Specification Languages for Process Control Systems: Lessons Learned and Steps to the Future?. In: Nierstrasz, O., Lemoine, M. (eds) Software Engineering — ESEC/FSE ’99. ESEC SIGSOFT FSE 1999 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1687. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48166-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48166-4_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66538-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48166-9

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