AN INTEGRATED SPECIFICATION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR COMMUNICATION SOFTWARE-DESIGN BASED ON STEPWISE REFINEMENT AND GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION

This paper discusses specification support for communication software design based on the formal description technique LOTOS. In specification description, it is essential to have description support as well. as some appropriate representation that can describe large-scale specifications and permit obtaining intuitive understanding. The discussion in this paper focuses on specification support through stepwise refinement based on structured design methods using a message sequence chart (MSC) and LOTOS graphical representation. To this end, we propose an integrated specification support system which provides an organic combination of MSCs, and specification descriptions in G-LOTOS which are used in a stepwise refinement as needed. The support system comprises two components: ASSISts, an MSC editor, and GLOER, a G-LOTOS editor.