Understanding formal specifications through good examples
Alex Gerdes, John Hughes, Nicholas Smallbone, Stefan Hanenberg, Sebastian Ivarsson, Meng Wang · 2018
Formal specifications of software applications are hard to understand, even for domain experts. Because a formal specification is abstract, reading it does not immediately convey the expected behaviour of the software. Carefully chosen examples of the software’s behaviour, on the other hand, are concrete and easy to understand—but poorly-chosen examples are more confusing than helpful. In order to understand formal specifications, software developers need good examples.