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Using spreadsheets for finite state modelling

Published: 23 February 2009 Publication History

Abstract

State based modelling is a widely used practice in the software industry. There are two methods of building state based models: either using graphical modelling tools, or using formal languages like SMV or SAL. The former method often suffers from the problem of cost, in particular, when the modelling requirements are lightweight, purchase of an elaborate modelling tool does not turn out to be cost effective. The latter method suffers from learning complexity problem. Software engineers, who write the specifications, are usually not familiar with formal languages On the other hand, a large number of software engineers find it convenient to write their specifications semi-formally using tools such as spreadsheets. We formalise the spreadsheet finite modelling language and demonstrate that it is expressive enough to capture most important notions of finite state modelling. We show that this language is sufficiently usable in terms of readability and maintainability. We also present SAL-gen, a tool that takes as an input a finite state model written in our language, and generates corresponding SAL code. This can form the basis for analysis tools such as property checkers and test generators using the existing SAL tool set.

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Leonardo de Moura Gregoire Hamon and John Rushby. Automated Test Generation using SAL. Technical report, SRI International, 2005.
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  • (2023)Spreadsheets As Hands-on Learning Tools In a Discrete Math/Structures CourseJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3606402.360642138:8(158-172)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023

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cover image ACM Conferences
ISEC '09: Proceedings of the 2nd India software engineering conference
February 2009
154 pages
ISBN:9781605584263
DOI:10.1145/1506216
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 23 February 2009

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Author Tags

  1. finite state machines
  2. sal
  3. spreadsheets

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  • Research-article

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ISEC '09
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ISEC '09: India Software Engineering Conference
February 23 - 26, 2009
Pune, India

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Overall Acceptance Rate 76 of 315 submissions, 24%

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  • (2023)Spreadsheets As Hands-on Learning Tools In a Discrete Math/Structures CourseJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3606402.360642138:8(158-172)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023

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