The analysis, development and testing of communication protocols are complex problems. These tasks can be made easier with protocol development tools, which support the whole protocol development process from specification to testing. They are either stand-alone tools related to a specific protocol engineering function (e.g. validation) or integrated protocol workstations solving several functions. The protocol development tools are usually based on formal description techniques. This paper describes the notion of CAPE (Computer-Aided Protocol Engineering) derived from CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) and presents the PROCONSUL protocol workstation. The intelligent editors of PROCONSUL are described in detail.
Formal Description Techniques and Software Engineering: Some Reflections after 2 Decades of Research