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From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: comp.specification
Subject: Re: The best tutorial on formal specifications
Message-ID: <1991May21.132856.27452@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 21 May 91 13:28:56 GMT
Article-I.D.: dcs.1991May21.132856.27452
References: <34341@mimsy.umd.edu> <34698@mimsy.umd.edu>
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie
Lines: 25

straub@cs.umd.edu (Pablo A. Straub) wrote:
> From: elkassas@eb.ele.tue.nl (sherif el kassas)

> The specification of complex systems by B. Cohen, W.T. Harwood and  M.I.
> Jackson.  -  Amsterdam  :  Addison-Wesley,  1986.  -  XII, 143 p. - ISBN
> 0-201-14400-X. A nice introduction. It builds up the argument/motivation
> for using formal  methods.  It's  most  important  feature  is  that  it
> compares  and  overviews the main approaches to formal methods (i.e. the
> process, model, and algebraic approaches).

I didn't like the algebraic section of this book at all.  You get presented
with a very complicated and unusually structured specification in one swell
foop, with no hint as to how the author might have arrived at it.

Much of the literature on model-based specification does quite well at
describing how you start constructing a spec and the tradeoffs involved in
different factorizations.  I don't know anything as good from the algebraic
side; does anyone?


-- 
--  Jack Campin   Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank
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