Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.
Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
In terms of designing software what does “Inconsistency” and “Incompleteness” really mean?
E.g. – Creating Specifications
Usage of Formal Methods of Software Engineering are said to be less “inconsistent” and “incomplete” than other less formal methods such as Object Orientated Design when creating specifications.
Inconsistency and incompleteness are both originally terms from formal logic, where they are used to describe logical systems.
The full definitions depend on the exact context, but inconsistency normally means something like “for some X, you can prove both X and !X”, and incompleteness means something like “for some X, you can’t prove X and you can’t prove !X”.
So, for specifications, I’d understand “inconsistent” to mean something like “cannot be implemented, because it is self-contradictory in some way”, and “incomplete” to mean “underspecified – for some inputs, the outputs are not clearly defined”.