Greg Reeve

A survey of software development practices in the New Zealand software industry

We report on the software development techniques used in the New Zealand software industry, paying particular attention to requirements gathering. We surveyed a selection of software companies with a general questionnaire and then conducted in-depth interviews with four companies. Our results show a wide variety in the kinds of companies undertaking software development, employing a wide range of software development techniques. Although our data are not sufficiently detailed to draw statistically significant conclusions, it appears that larger software development groups typically have more well-defined software development processes, spend proportionally more time on requirements gathering, and follow more rigorous testing regimes.

mu-Charts and Z: Hows, Whys, and Wherefores

In this paper we show, by a series of examples, how the µ-chart formalism can be translated into Z. We give reasons for why this is an interesting and sensible thing to do and what it might be used for.

µ-Chart-Based Specification and Refinement

We introduce two new notions of refinement for µ-charts and compare them with the existing notion due to Scholz. The two notions are interesting and important because one gives rise (via a logic) to a calculus for constructing refinements and the other gives rise (via model checking) to a way of checking that refinements hold. Thus we bring together the two competing worlds of model checking and proof.

/spl mu/-Charts and Z: examples and extensions

/spl mu/-Charts are a way of specifying reactive systems, i.e. systems which are in some environment to which they have to react, based on the well-established formalism Statecharts. This paper gives (very abbreviated) examples of translating /spl mu/-charts to Z, which is itself a well-established language for specifying computational systems with tried and tested methods and support tools which guide its effective use in systems development. We undertake this translation in order that investigation of the modelled system can be performed before expensive and lengthy implementation is considered. We also present an extension of the /spl mu/-charts and the related Z to deal with a simple command language, local variables and integer-valued signals.

Semantic properties of /spl mu/-charts

μ-Charts are a Statechart-like language which is designed for specifying reactive systems. This paper extends the language of μ-charts with a new parallel operator; it defines a formal semantics for the language, and then it explores the semantic properties of the extended language. The work concludes with a simple case study to illustrate how the language may be used to specify and reason about reactive systems.

Idioms for /spl mu/-charts

This paper presents an idiomatic construct for /spl mu/-charts which reflects the high-level specification construct of synchronization between activities. This, amongst others, has emerged as a common and useful idea during our use of /spl mu/-charts to design and specify commonly-occurring reactive systems. The purpose of this example, apart from any inherent interest in being able to use synchronization in a specification, is to show how the very simple language of /spl mu/-charts can used as a basis for a more expressive language built by definitional extension.