A formal techniques environment for telecommunications software

The pre-competitive European Community RACE programme is designed to lead to Integrated Broadband Communications (IBC). The paper describes the work of the SPECS (Specification and Programming Environment for Communications Software) project which has the objective to provide maximum automation and optimisation of the whole software process from requirements through specification, design, implementation, test, execution and maintenance. The basis for the methodology is the application of formal methods. The emphasis of the paper is on the methodology and architecture of supporting tools which are under development within the SPECS project