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Composing Models for Detecting Inconsistencies: A Requirements Engineering Perspective

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Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2009)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 5512))

Abstract

[Context and motivation] Ever-growing systems’ complexity and novel requirements engineering approaches such as reuse or globalization imply that requirements are produced by different stakeholders and written in possibly different languages. [Question/ problem] In this context, checking consistency so that requirements specifications are amenable to formal analysis is a challenge. Current techniques either fail to consider the requirement set as a whole, missing certain inconsistency types or are unable to take heterogeneous (i.e. expressed in different languages) specifications into account. [Principal ideas/ results] We propose to use model composition to address this problem in a staged approach. First, heterogeneous requirements are translated in model fragments which are instances of a common metamodel. Then, these fragments are merged in one unique model. On such a model inconsistencies such as under-specifications can be incrementally detected and formal analysis is made possible. Our approach is fully supported by our model composition framework. [Contribution] We propose model composition as means to address flexibility needs in requirements integration. Threats to validity such as the impact of new requirements languages needs to be addressed in future work.

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Perrouin, G., Brottier, E., Baudry, B., Le Traon, Y. (2009). Composing Models for Detecting Inconsistencies: A Requirements Engineering Perspective. In: Glinz, M., Heymans, P. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. REFSQ 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5512. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02050-6_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02050-6_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-02049-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-02050-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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