From Natural Language Requirements to Rigorous Property Specifications

− Property specifications concisely descr ibe selected aspects of what a software system is supposed to do. I t is surpr isingly difficult to wr ite these proper ties correctly. Although there are r igorous mathematical formalisms for representing proper ties, these are often difficult to use. No matter what notation is used, however, there are often subtle, but important, details that need to be considered. The PROPEL tool aims to make the job of wr iting and understanding proper ties easier by providing templates that explicitly capture these details as options for commonly-occurr ing proper ty patterns. These templates are represented using “ disciplined” natural language, decision trees, and finite-state automata, allowing the developer to easily move between these representations.