Querying and analysis of software specifications

A system for the definition, querying and analysis of executable specification is presented in the paper. After a short review RSF, a specification language for the definition of systems with time constraints, the authors consider the problem of querying the specifications. The query language RSQ allows one to characterize sub-classes of possible specification execution behaviours in terms of queries directed to the specification. The problem of selection of significant information produced during the execution of the specification is also considered. The system proposes three linguistic tools, one for the definition, one for the querying and the last for the filtering of executable software specifications. The linguistic tools are quite homogeneous both in their syntax and semantics and support the organization of software behaviour inspection and analysis in the RSF prototyping environment