Pragmatic specification of software behavior, configuration, and orchestration: the precision and usability of domain-specific modeling
Software & Systems Modeling, vol. 24, pp. 1621–1622
Abstract
In recent discussions, a recurring theme has been the evolving role of specification languages in industrial practice.While formal methods and modeling languages have long aspired to provide unified frameworks for reasoning about software systems, contemporary usage patterns-particularly in largescale industrial settings such as big tech companies-paint a different picture.In several big tech companies, and potentially in other software-intensive businesses, specification exists almost entirely in the service of verification.If a specification does not directly enable the formal verification of an artifact of practical importance-such as code, APIs, configurations, protocols, or policies-it is deemed irrelevant.This perspective frames specification not as an abstraction layer or design blueprint, but as a tightly coupled tool for reasoning about concrete, existing system artifacts.The implications are far-reaching.First, languages are chosen not for their generality or unification power, but rather for their precision and fitness for a specific verification task.They specify specific artifacts, e.g., configuration or orchestration of specific tasks.Task plans are then integrated using sophisticated and consistency-verifying tools.Often, this means designing small domain-specific languages (DSLs) that restrict certain forms of expressiveness, but in B
Authors 4
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Affiliation as printed
University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
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Affiliation as printed
University of Rennes, Rennes, France
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Affiliation as printed
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
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Affiliation as printed
RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
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