Software faults can arise from a programmer's lack of understanding of the tasks required due to poor quality requirements documents. Clearly the solution is to improve the quality of these requirements documents, hence making the required tasks more accessible to the programmers. This confirmed the researchers opinion on the readability of tabularised documents. The use of a precise formalism for a requirements document enables the document to support a second role. This being the verification of the implemented system against the requirements document.
Tables provide a precise notation and hence can be employed for verification purposes.
The use of tables for verification was exemplified on the safety-critical software in the Darlington Nuclear Power Generating Station, Ontario, Canada. Research at Swansea Research on tables began at Swansea in October 1993 with the intention of applying tables practically to document systems. It compliments our research on modelling systems using algebraic methods and specifying formally systems using equations. A larger case study has been conducted by an undergraduate student, Matthew Dixon, in his final year project. Two courses which contain material based on this research are available for students at Swansea, namely Systems Development which is compulsory for second year Undergraduates studying for a BSc with honours and as an option for postgraduate students studying for a conversion Masters degree.