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A Layered Approach to Specification Authoring, Sharing, and Usage

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Quality Software Through Reuse and Integration (FMI 2016, IRI 2016 2016)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 561))

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Abstract

Compositional reuse of software libraries is important for productivity. To promote reliability and correctness, there must also be a way to compose specifications for reuse. However, specifications cannot be adapted by the use of wrappers in the same ways as code, which leads to specifications being copied and modified. This copying and modification of specifications leads to poor maintainability and technical debt. We propose a system, Spekl, that solves these problems and makes compositional reuse of specifications possible in a way independent of the choice of specification languages and tools. We provide a detailed description of our system as well as provide details on our domain specific language for creating new tools, provide details on how to author new specifications, and demonstrate how Spekl facilitates compositional reuse through specification layering.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The name Spekl comes from the abbreviation of Spekkoek, a cake originating in the Netherlands that is densely layered.

  2. 2.

    The disadvantage of Spekl’s technique is the use of more disk space than sharing a single installation of each tool.

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Acknowledgments

The work of both authors was supported in part by NSF grants CCF0916350 and CNS1228695, and CCF1518897. The work of Leavens was also supported by NSF grants CCF0916715, CCF1017262. The authors would like to thank Rochelle Elva, Faraz Hussain, and Luke Myers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA

    John L. Singleton & Gary T. Leavens

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  1. John L. Singleton
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  2. Gary T. Leavens
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Correspondence to Gary T. Leavens .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific, San Diego, California, USA

    Stuart H. Rubin

  2. Laboratoire de Communication dans les Systèmes Informatiques, Ecole nationale Supérieure d’Informatique, Algiers, Algeria

    Thouraya Bouabana-Tebibel

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Singleton, J.L., Leavens, G.T. (2018). A Layered Approach to Specification Authoring, Sharing, and Usage. In: Rubin, S., Bouabana-Tebibel, T. (eds) Quality Software Through Reuse and Integration. FMI IRI 2016 2016 2016. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 561. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56157-8_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56157-8_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56156-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56157-8

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