RSF - A FORMALISM FOR EXECUTABLE REQUIREMENT SPECIFICATIONS

RSF is a formalism for specifying and prototyping systems with time constraints. Specifications are given via a set of transition rules. The application of a transition rule requires the presence of certain events. The occurrence times of the events and the data associated with them must satisfy given properties. As a consequence of the application of a rule, some events are generated and others are scheduled to occur in the future, after given intervals of time. Specifications can be queried and the computation of answers to queries provides a generalized form of rapid prototyping. Executability is obtained by mapping the RSF rules into logic programming. The paper presents the rationale, the definition of the formalism, the execution techniques which support the general notion of rapid prototyping, and a few examples of its use. © 1990 IEEE