About the Correctness and Adequacy of PLUSS Specifications

In the context of algebraic specifications written in Pluss, this paper investigates various issues raised by the question: “Is my specification correct?”. Up to now the only ways to check the adequacy of a specification with respect to the problem to be solved are through running a prototype on appropriate examples, or through the use of the specification to prove consequent (expected) properties. Before this problem may be fully addressed, issues regarding the specification consistency and the correctness of the prototype w.r.t. the specification must be studied. In this paper, various issues concerning checking consistency and proving properties of PLUSS specifications are presented. It is investigated how general properties can be proved using an appropriate presentation of the specification that may be understood by a prototyping tool. While this study is done in the framework of the pluss specification language, it should be clear that most of the issues considered here arise in a similar way with other specification languages.

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