Experimental comparison of the comprehensibility of a Z specification and its implementation in Java


Snook, Colin and Harrison, Rachel (2004) Experimental comparison of the comprehensibility of a Z specification and its implementation in Java. Information and Software Technology, 46, (14), 955-971.

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Description/Abstract

Comprehensibility is often raised as a problem with formal notations, yet formal methods practitioners dispute this. In a survey, one interviewee said "formal specifications are no more difficult to understand than code". Measurement of comprehension is necessarily comparative and a useful comparison for a specification is against its implementation. Practitioners have an intuitive feel for the comprehension of code. A quantified comparison will transfer this feeling to formal specifications. We performed an experiment to compare the comprehension of a Z specification with that of its implementation in Java. The results indicate there is little difference in comprehensibility between the two.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Event Dates: 9/04/01 - 11/04/01
Related URLs:
Keywords: Empirical assessment, Formal specification, Comprehension
Divisions: Faculty of Physical and Applied Science > Electronics and Computer Science
Item ID: 260170
Date Deposited: 02 Dec 2004
Last Modified: 02 Mar 2012 01:47
Contributors: Snook, Colin (Author)
Harrison, Rachel (Author)
Date: November 2004
Additional Information: Event Dates: 9/04/01 - 11/04/01
Status: Published
Publisher: Elsevier
Further Information:Google Scholar
ISI Citation Count:2
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/260170

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