Abstract
Abstract: The front-end life cycle or upper CASE aspects of software development for distributed systems is driven by the components of applications, management, and techniques/tools. The applications component seeks taxonomies of application domains in distributed computing and the identification of core software requirements. The management component concerns the twofold aspects of developing distributed computing systems and distributed development teams. The techniques/tools component includes analysis of those elements available to support software development. Specifications have advantages and limitations in distributed computing that must be addressed to effectively develop software systems. This paper describes the role of executable specifications in distributed computing, specification language development/experience, and future directions.