On a formal semantics of tabular expressions

Parnas et al. (Janicki et al., in: Brink, Kahl, Schmidt (Eds.), Relational Methods in Computer Science, Springer, Berlin, 1997; Parnas, Commun. ACM 26 (8) (1983) 572–581; Parnas and Madey, Sci. Comput. Programm. 25 (1) (1995) 41–61; Parnas et al., IEEE Trans. Software Eng. 20 (12) (1994) 948–976) advocate the use of relational model for documenting the intended behaviour of programs. In this method, tabular expressions (or tables) are used to improve readability so that formal documentation can replace conventional documentation. Parnas (CRL Report 260, Telecommunications Research Institute of Ontario (TRIO), Mcmaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 1992) describes several classes of tables and provides their formal syntax and semantics. In this paper, an alternative, more general and more homogeneous semantics is proposed. The model covers all known types of tables used in Software Engineering.