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Interchanging Specifications and Implementations in Evolutionary Prototyping
Author(s) -
ÖZCAN MEHMET BÜLENT,
SIDDIQI JAWED
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-024x(199609)26:9<999::aid-spe43>3.0.co;2-w
Subject(s) - implementation , computer science , modular design , quality (philosophy) , software engineering , context (archaeology) , programming language , systems engineering , engineering , epistemology , biology , paleontology , philosophy
The strategy of retrofitting quality onto a prototype and evolving it into a production quality system has at best led to severe problems and at worst to a complete failure. The present work reports on an environment and methodology that supports the development of high quality prototypes that can easily accommodate changes so that the prototypes can be evolved into production quality systems. An outline of the environment incorporating an architectural mechanism and associated tools that accommodates the intertwining of algebraic specifications, known as ADTSPEC, and implementations in a modular programming language, PARADOX PASCAL, is presented. A framework for applying the environment in the context of evolutionary development is detailed. An illustrative application is also presented. It demonstrates the effectiveness of the work, to support user participation at each stage of evolution and the engineering of high quality prototypes constructed in a systematic manner, incorporating the degree of rigour that is appropriate to the clarity of requirements.