Structured analysis is a widely-used methodology which employs data flow diagrams, data dictionary, mini specifications as tools for system definition. However, structured analysis is capable of inspecting the system only statically. If specifications are executable, the functions of the system can be analyzed dynamically.
In this thesis, we propose an execution model based on the message passing among processes in data flow diagrams and design a specification language, ESPL (Executable Specification Language), based on this execution model which can represent the asynchronous parallel execution. A specification executor which converts the ESPL specification into the C Shell scripts and executes them has been implemented in C language on UNIX 4.3 BSD.
