DPSOI: an executable requirements specification language for information processing systems

The authors present the Delphi project, which deals with the design and implementation of a software engineering environment (SEE) to enhance software productivity, in particular, one that targets information systems (IS) for business data processing problems. A set of specification languages was designed to specify the IS in a modular manner. Collectively, these languages are called the data processing specification outlining language (DPSOL). DPSOL is customizable, executable, extensible, and translatable and can be used in rapid prototyping or in automatic translation to a target 3GL/environment. The authors present the expressive power of DPSOL to specify the IS, and its automated process of checking referential integrity and computational consistency. The approach is translational (using templates) instead of transformational. Templating is a powerful concept in automatic programming, at least for IS. The templates can be edited and modified to generate customized 3GL source code. Moreover, documentation can also be automatically generated