From scenarios to code: An air traffic control case study

There has been much recent interest in synthesis algorithms that generate finite state machines from scenarios of intended system behavior. One of the uses of such algorithms is in the transition from requirements scenarios to design. Despite much theoretical work on the nature of these algorithms, there has been very little work on applying the algorithms to practical applications. In this paper, we apply the Whittle & Schumann synthesis algorithm [32] to a component of an air traffic advisory system under development at NASA Ames Research Center. We not only apply the algorithm to generate state machine designs from scenarios but also show how to generate code from the generated state machines using existing commercial code generation tools. The results demonstrate the possibility of generating application code directly from scenarios of system behavior.