On the execution of high level formal specifications
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Computer Science—the theory, representation, processing, communication and use of information—is fundamentally transforming every aspect of human endeavor. The Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University advances computational and information sciences through; 1. educational and research programs within and beyond the university; 2. active engagement to help define national and international research, and 3. educational agendas, and sustained commitment to graduating leaders for academia, industry and government.
History
The Computer Science Department was officially established in 1969, with Robert Stewart serving as the founding Department Chair. Faculty were composed of joint appointments with Mathematics, Statistics, and Electrical Engineering. In 1969, the building which now houses the Computer Science department, then simply called the Computer Science building, was completed. Later it was named Atanasoff Hall. Throughout the 1980s to present, the department expanded and developed its teaching and research agendas to cover many areas of computing.
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1969-present
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- College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (parent college)
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Abstract
Executable specifications can serve as prototypes of the specified system and as oracles for automated testing of implementations, and so are more useful than non-executable specifications. Executable specifications can also be debugged in much the same way as programs, allowing errors to be detected and corrected at the specification level rather than in later stages of software development. However, existing executable specification languages often force the specifier to work at a low level of abstraction, which negates many of the advantages of non-executable specifications. This dissertation shows how to execute specifications written at a level of abstraction comparable to that found in specifications written in non-executable specification languages. The key innovation is an algorithm for evaluating and satisfying first order predicate logic assertions written over abstract model types. This is important because many specification languages use such assertions. Some of the features of this algorithm were inspired by techniques from constraint logic programming.