CpSc 872

Assignment 3

Trade Study on Specification Notations

The specification of a software system includes a number of aspects: behavior, attributes, and states. Any notation to be used for specification writing must address all of these aspects. We have studied UML and Object-Z/TCOZ. We now want to compare the two notations.

The requirements statement, that was used in assignment 2, will be the basis for the study. The purpose of this assignment is to identify criteria for specifications and to compare the two notations.

Steps:

1. Identify criteria for evaluating a specification notation that can be used for the study.
2. Part 1 of the document should explain each of the criteria and its unique contribution to evaluating a specification notation.
3. Part 2 of the document should analyze each notation for each criteria. Rate each notation's score on each criteria.
4. Part 3 of the document should complete the study for an embedded real-time system. Address this by assigning weights to the criteria and then calculating a score for each notation.