[Attempto] executable specifications

[Norbert E. Fuchs]

On 30 Oct 2010, at 22:35, Kenneth Jones wrote:

> ACE was initially created as a language for the expression of executable software specifications.  You have since turned your attention to other potential applications of ACE.  Why is that?

Ken

You are right. Before we started developing ACE in 1995, I worked on executable software specifications. See for example

  http://www.ifi.uzh.ch/rerg/fileadmin/downloads/publications/papers/Executable_Specifications.pdf

During this time my former PhD student Markus Fromherz and I developed a graphical specification system where the functionality was expressed in Prolog – thus defying our intention to hide formality from the casual user. Rolf Schwitter, another former PhD student of mine, and I decided to express the functionality instead in natural language – which was the start point of ACE as a software specification language. A typical early paper is 

  web.science.mq.edu.au/~rolfs/papers/EMISA96.pdf

Working on ACE fascinated us so much and took so much of our time that the original graphical specification system was left behind. Later we were involved in, and most importantly got funding for, projects concerning the semantic web and medicine which led to so many extension of ACE that in the end it developed into a general knowledge representation language. My former PhD students Kaarel Kaljurand and Tobias Kuhn took fancy to the semantic web and developed the tools ACE View and AceWiki. 

But executable specifications are not forgotten. During the workshop CNL 2010 I gave a tutorial entitled "First-Order Reasoning for Attempto Controlled English" where I presented my reasoner RACE (http://staff.um.edu.mt/mros1/cnl2010/TALKS/fuchs.pdf). On the last slide I described future work among which you also find "executable specifications".

> Also, As far as I know, ACE has not been used in industry to improve the quality of specifications.  Why do you think that is?

I do not have complete information for which purposes people have used ACE so that I do not know whether your statement is correct.

Regards.

   --- nef