Deriving Modular Designs from Formal Specifications Deriving Modular Designs from Formal Speciications

We consider the problem of designing the top-level modular structure of an implementation. Our starting point is a formal speciication of the system. Our approach is to analyse the references to the state variables by the operations of the system. Those variables that are referenced/modiied together are likely candidates for forming the state of a module. We evaluate the strategy by applying it to a large Z speciication of a language-based editor.