Abstract
Several evaluation criteria exist in the literature for both specification and
specification techniques. These evaluation criteria identify a list of desired
properties in specifications and specification techniques for judging their goodness.
This paper presents a detailed analysis of several specification and specification
technique evaluation criteria. Detailed analysis of these criteria identified that
there is a lack of consistency in the property definition among criteria. The
implication of this lack of differentiation between the two concepts is that the
criteria for both specification and specification techniques are intermingled. Since
the concept of specification is different from specification technique, the criteria
used for one might not be applicable for the other. For example,
"completeness" and "consistency" are specification criteria.
A specification can be complete and consistent regardless of the medium used to
represent the specification, the process used in its construction, the degree/extent
of tools and automation used, or whether it is formal or informal. However, there
is meaning to denote that a technique can be used to produce "consistent"
or "complete" specifications. Hence, for proper applicability of these
criteria, this paper separates specification criteria from that of the specification
technique criteria. This paper also presents a unified criteria terminology and uses
a table to list each criterion property from various researchers mapped to the unified
terminology. The paper also identifies and presents a mapping from technique criteria
to the specification criteria that shows which technique criteria satisfies specification
criteria. The applicability of the mapping is then demonstrated by applying the mapping
to a specification language and its support environment.