Automatic Cross Validation of Multiple Specifications: A Case Study

Abstract. The problem of formal software specification has been addressed and discussed since the infancy of software engineering. However, among all the proposed solutions, none is universally accepted yet. Many different formal descriptions can in fact be given for the same software component; thus, the problem of determining the consistency relation among those descriptions becomes relevant and potentially critical. In this work, we propose a method for comparing two specific kinds of formal specifications of containers. In particular, we check the consistency of intensional behavior models with algebraic specifications. The consistency check is performed by generating a behavioral equivalence model from the intensional model, converting the algebraic axioms into temporal logic formulae, and then checking them against the model by using the NuSMV model checker. An automated software tool which encodes the problem as model checking has been implemented to check the consistency of recovered specifications of relevant Java classes.