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Determining the specification of a control system from that of its environment

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Michael Jackson, Professor Cliff JonesORCiD

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Abstract

Well understood methods exist for developing programs from given specifications. A formal method identifies proof obligations at each development step: if all such proof obligations are discharged, a precisely defined class of errors can be excluded from the final program. For a class of ``closed'' systems such methods offer a gold standard against which less formal approaches can be measured. For ``open'' systems --those which interact with the physical world-- the task of obtaining the program specification can be as challenging as the task of deriving the program. And, when a system of this class must tolerate certain kinds of unreliability in the physical world, it is still more challenging to reach confidence that the specification obtained is adequate. We argue that widening the notion of software development to include specifying the behaviour of the relevant parts of the physical world gives a way to derive the specification of a control system and also to record precisely the assumptions being made about the world outside the computer.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Hayes I, Jackson M, Jones C

Publication type: Report

Publication status: Published

Series Title: School of Computing Science Technical Report Series

Year: 2003

Pages: 16

Print publication date: 01/01/2003

Source Publication Date: 2003

Report Number: 808

Institution: School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Place Published: Newcastle upon Tyne

URL: http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/trs/papers/808.pdf


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