A research study summitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology

Research Studies Project Report (M. Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1987

Specification language is used as a tool for communicating idea between software developers a nd their customers. The lack of a precise and powerful specification language may lead to the delivery of unreliable , or sometimes unusable products. In this research study, problems of current software development, the trend and new concepts in modern large-scalesoftware design techniques are investigated. Data abstraction, modularity and concurrency are found to be important concepts. Based on these concepts, a new specification language is designed and developed. It supports both the architectural design, by providing a graphical and textual syntaxes, and the detailed design, by providing a formal language which is composed of Modula-2 reserved words a nd constructs to specify information about related libraries of software, timing, processes, communications and states. In order to illustrate the effectiveness of the language, three specification and design examples are presented. Comparison with the approach using existing specification languages is also made.