Specification, Analysis, and Testing of Scenario-Based Requirements

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9970925 PI: Alur, Rajeev University of PennsylvaniaSpecification, Analysis, and Testing of Scenario-based RequirementsScenario-based specifications such as message sequence charts offer an intuitive and visual way of describing design requirements. Such specifications focus on message exchanges among communicating entities in distributed software systems. Recent standardization of syntax and semantics (MSC'96 or Z.120) by ITU and integration into modern object-oriented software engineering methodologies such as UML, lead us to believe that scenario-based specifications will play an increasingly important role in design of concurrent systems. This research aims to develop new language features, methodologies, analysis techniques, and tools for effective use of scenario-based requirements in software design. We propose to pursue two complementary research directions. The first goal is to develop new techniques to employ scenario-based requirements for automatic validation. For this purpose, we will develop algorithms for model checking and test-case generation based on specifications given by message sequence charts. The second goal is to develop new constructs to allow specification of complex behaviors. For this purpose, we will investigate constructors that are particularly suitable for abstraction, and for specification of mixed discrete-continuous behaviors. We propose to investigate foundational research questions related to the above issues, and develop an integrated toolkit for specification, analysis, and testing of scenario-based requirements.