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Formal and informal specifications of a secure system component: first results in a comparative study

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FME '94: Industrial Benefit of Formal Methods (FME 1994)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 873))

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Abstract

This paper presents initial results in a comparative study of formal and conventional techniques in the design of a secure system component: a trusted gateway.

The operation of a trusted gateway is briefly introduced. The industrial context of its development is described, as is the form of the experiment. So far, part-formal and conventional design specifications have been produced for the trusted gateway from a common informal requirements document. As part of this process, queries have been raised against the informal requirements. These have been carefully logged, and form the subject of a preliminary analysis presented here. These first results suggest that the use of a formal specification language (in this case VDM-SL) leads to an an increased number of queries, and a bias in the specifier's concerns towards data rather than design issues.

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References

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Maurice Naftalin Tim Denvir Miquel Bertran

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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Fitzgerald, J.S., Brookes, T.M., Green, M.A., Larsen, P.G. (1994). Formal and informal specifications of a secure system component: first results in a comparative study. In: Naftalin, M., Denvir, T., Bertran, M. (eds) FME '94: Industrial Benefit of Formal Methods. FME 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 873. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58555-9_85

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58555-9_85

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-58555-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49031-9

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