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A Pattern-based Approach towards Expressive Specifications for Property Concepts

Authors:
Geert Delanote
Jeroen Boydens
Eric Steegmans

Keywords: Pattern; Specification; Property; Language Construct.

Abstract:
In Object-Oriented programming, a significant effort has been made in recent years to increase the expressiveness of programming constructs for the production of code. Developers can implement more functionality in less lines, and with more compile-time guarantees. We have not seen such a similar evolution in the design and specification of code. Support for code specification remains a feature that is rarely integrated in the language itself (e.g., Eiffel), and is too often migrated to ad hoc language additions (e.g., annotations). The lack of such first-class, language-integrated support leads to (1) developers who are forced to write ad-hoc code specifications in a non-standardized manner, often ex-post and time-permitting, and (2) to situations in which other developers, who reuse that code, are tempted to read the code itself (if available) rather than the specification, in order to understand what the code actually does. In this paper, we take an evolutionary approach to language-integrated specification constructs, with the ambition to enhance the overall expressiveness of specifications in object- oriented languages. We start from existing best practices and propose improvements through specification patterns that not only enhance the expressiveness of specifications, but also aid developers in specifying their code through concrete “structures” in order to avoid ad-hoc, non-standardized specifications. Finally, we also propose language constructs that help aim to increase the level of abstraction, by shielding developers from boilerplate specification as much as possible.

Pages: 249 to 257

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2013

Publication date: October 27, 2013

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4235

ISBN: 978-1-61208-304-9

Location: Venice, Italy

Dates: from October 27, 2013 to October 31, 2013