Formal Modeling of Complex Commands in Industrial Software Specifications
Authors: Mannino, Michael V.; Rathnam, Sukumar; Choi, In Jun; Tseng, Veronica
Journal: Information Systems Research (1994)
DOI: 10.1287/isre.5.3.249
<jats:p> We present a formal approach for modeling complex commands characterized by heavy overloading of function, large numbers of parameters, dependencies among parameters, subtle side effects, and lack of abstraction. Complex commands arise in a variety of business settings such as requesting a brokerage order, enrolling in a course, and specifying a product order. In addition, complex commands are also prevalent where specification of commands is strictly separated from multiple, independent implementations as in open software standards. </jats:p><jats:p> Our approach is based on an inheritance structure known as a command lattice. Like other forms of inheritance, command lattices support incremental definition and abbreviation of specifications. Because a complete command lattice can have a large number of specifications, we develop another structure known as a minimal command tree in which a command lattice is derived from a much smaller number of independent specifications. To map from a minimal command tree to a command lattice, we present algorithms that materialize an arbitrary node of a command lattice and compactly generate the behavior of a command lattice. To demons…