Generalization/Specialization as a Basis for Software Specification

This paper describes a software specification methodology based on the notion of concept specialization. The methodology, which is particularly useful for Information Systems, applies uniformly to the various components of such systems, such as data classes, transactions, exceptions, and user interfaces (scripts), and its goal is the systematic and structured description of highly detailed world models, where concepts occur in many variations. An example from the domain of university information systems is used to illustrate and motivate the approach.