Operational specification as the basis for rapid prototyping

Abstract

This paper describes a set of freedoms which both simplify the task of specifing systems and make the resulting specification more comprehensible. These freedoms eliminate the need, in specific areas, to consider: the mechanisims for accomplishing certain capabilities, the careful coordination and integration of separate operations, the costs of those operations, and other detailed concerns which characterize implementation.These freedoms are partitioned into the areas of efficiency, method, and data, and providing them has resulted in a novel formal specification language, Gist. The main features of this language are described in terms of the freedoms it affords. An overview of the language is then presented together with an example of its use to specify the behavior of a real system.