Scenario-based Requirements

Rajeev Alur

Support from NSF award CCR99-70925 (Specification, analysis, and testing of scenario-based requirements) is gratefully acknowledged.

Scenario-based specifications such as message sequence charts offer an intuitive and visual way of describing design requirements. Such specifications focus on message exchanges among communicating entities in distributed software systems. Recent standardization of syntax and semantics (MSC'96 or Z.120) by ITU and integration into modern object-oriented software engineering methodologies such as UML, lead us to believe that scenario-based specifications will play an increasingly important role in design of concurrent systems. This research project aims to develop new language features, methodologies, analysis techniques, and tools for effective use of scenario-based requirements in software design.

Papers

R. Alur and R. Grosu. Shared variables interaction diagrams, 16th IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, 2001. Full paper.
R. Alur, K. Etessami, and M. Yannakakis. Realizability and verification of MSC graphs, 28th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming, 2001. Abstract. Full paper.
R. Alur, K. Etessami, and M. Yannakakis. Inference of message sequence charts, 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering, 2000. Abstract. Revised and extended version.
R. Alur and M. Yannakakis. Model checking of message sequence charts, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Concurrency Theory, Springer Verlag, 1999. Abstract. Full paper.
R. Alur, G.J. Holzmann, D. Peled. An analyzer for message sequence charts. Software Concepts and Tools, 17(2):70-77, 1996 (preliminary version appeared in Proc. 2nd TACAS, LNCS 1055, 1996). Abstract. Full paper.