Temporal Logics Meet Real-World Software Requirements: A Reality Check
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Description
Reasoning on the behavior of software systems is
challenging, especially in critical domains such as aerospace.
Transitioning from natural language to formal specifications
enables long-pursued activities such as modeling, synthesis, and
verification. Temporal logics are often used in this regard, each
with different operators, expressiveness or associated implemen-
tations. However, a significant gap exists between the theoretical
capabilities of the logics applied in formal methods and the
practical needs for specifying real-world requirements. This
paper addresses this gap through a case study of SpaceWire,
a standard specification for a data-handling communication
protocol often adopted on spacecraft and other on-board sys-
tems. We extract 89 software requirements exhibiting temporal
behavior and transcribe them into logic-based formalizations
using different established temporal logics, maximizing natural
encoding. We analyze the suitability of the chosen logics for
formalizing the selected software requirements to reason about
potential implications for both researchers and practitioners.
Index Terms—requirements, specification, temporal logics
challenging, especially in critical domains such as aerospace.
Transitioning from natural language to formal specifications
enables long-pursued activities such as modeling, synthesis, and
verification. Temporal logics are often used in this regard, each
with different operators, expressiveness or associated implemen-
tations. However, a significant gap exists between the theoretical
capabilities of the logics applied in formal methods and the
practical needs for specifying real-world requirements. This
paper addresses this gap through a case study of SpaceWire,
a standard specification for a data-handling communication
protocol often adopted on spacecraft and other on-board sys-
tems. We extract 89 software requirements exhibiting temporal
behavior and transcribe them into logic-based formalizations
using different established temporal logics, maximizing natural
encoding. We analyze the suitability of the chosen logics for
formalizing the selected software requirements to reason about
potential implications for both researchers and practitioners.
Index Terms—requirements, specification, temporal logics
Date of Publication
2025-04-27
Publication Type
Conference Item
Language(s)
en
Contributor(s)
Access(Rights)
restricted