SNL2Z: Tool for Translating an Informal Structured Software Specification into Formal Specification

Abstract

In the area of software engineering there have been very few efforts to automate the translation from specifications written in natural language to the formal specification languages. Writing of the specifications in natural language is always depending on context and it is commonly vagueness; this represents the major reasons of the challenge. This paper discusses the design of a tool for translating a software specification written in natural language into a formal specification. We apply controlled natural language that limits the syntax and semantics when the natural language statements been written by proposing structured natural language (SNL) to avoid the ambiguity problem. The tool uses basic information about the operation schemas and statements describing the specification of the system written by a group of user collaboratively as input. The output of the tool is a translation and interpreting of the specification statements into equivalent statements in LATEX form, which are compiled to produce an equivalent statements in Z.