Engineering formal requirements: An analysis and testing method for Z documents

Z is a declarative, non‐executable specification language; its diffusion in the field of requirements engineering outside academia is slow but growing. In this paper we focus on some methods for analyzing and testing Z specification documents, with special emphasis on non‐sequential systems specifications. We describe two techniques we have adopted: the former allows the specifier to add to the requirements document a number of properties that then can be checked using a formal semantics; the latter makes it possible to build directly from the requirements specification document a distributed prototype which can be executed and tested over a network of workstations.

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