The Front End of Software Development: Implementation of a Formally Specified User Interface

This technical report outlines the project and chronicles the research activities conducted by the author in the software implementation of a formally specified user interface. As software applications diffuse into every facet of our contemporary society, controlling from the Wall Street Stock Exchange to our personal security, the magnitude of their consequence is becoming more apparent. The correct engineering approach and attitude are required for software development to avoid a billion-dollar damage by a switch-board crash or the loss of a single life. To address this concern, a study is undertaken here at University of Virginia to study software survivability. This study especially targets the safety critical application domain as it uses a small nuclear research facility as the case study tool. The goal of this study is to develop a reliable prototype control system via the formal specification approach. This research is currently in the user-interface development stage. As chapter 2 will illustrate, the formal specification for the user interface plays a crucial role in the overall user-interface architecture. The role of the author in this research project is confined to this user-interface development – implementing the graphical user interface according to the architecture discussed in chapter 2. Chapter 3 will describe in detail the procedure followed in this implementation process. The levels of implementation discussed in this chapter include the lexical and the syntactic implementation. The third level, semantic implementation is currently on-going and therefore is not included. The discussion section in chapter 4 of this technical report will show that the framework of the user interface is in place. The lexical and the syntactic implementation have addressed many of the risks associated with this development. Chapter 4 also includes a listing of any difficulties encountered in the process. For future research in the same area, chapter 5 will offer recommendations on improving the implementation techniques.

Thesis originally deposited on 2011-12-28 in version 1.28 of Libra. This thesis was migrated to Libra2 on 2016-11-30 15:21:09.