The authors describe the development of a prototype database system in the high-level language Foxbase, using cleanroom techniques in conjunction with the pseudocode-based Box Description Language design methodology. The paper describes the techniques used and goes on to quantify and  classify  the errors found at various stages in the process. Unfortunately, no analysis is made of such questions as how the use of a higher-level language affected the number of errors; how many of the errors were found more easily through the document-based cleanroom approach than through the use of modern debuggers; how using the paper-based cleanroom technique affected development time; or how many of the benefits described were due to cleanroom techniques and how many were due to the design methodology.

The project is small (four people, two person-years, and 1820 lines of code), so the results found will not necessarily scale up to using these techniques on a significantly large real-world problem. The paper describes the progress of a typical small development project and how it produced robust and correct code at the end of the day. Unfortunately, any significant analysis of how this was achieved is lacking.