A multiple viewed approach to software requirements
Harry S. Delugach · 1992
A problem in current requirements development techniques is that the viewpoints (including implicit pre-existing assumptions) of multiple participants must be satisfied by the resulting requirements. Choosing a single language for all participants requires the additional burden of learning the new language and being prepared to overlook some requirements for which the language was not intended. This dissertation proposes a framework and methodology whereby multiple requirements specifications can be produced in several languages of the participants ’ own choosing, then translated into a meta-language (that is, a language capable of capturing features of several different requirements languages) in order to analyze their common features. The meta-language of conceptual graphs is used to capture requirements expressed in various conventional requirements development notations. Once translated into conceptual graphs, the set of requirements is analyzed in order to find the most likely counterpart concepts between the partcipants ’ requirements specifications. These counterparts represent the overlap between views and form the basis for joining the multiple graphs into one requirements graph. Ambiguous counterparts (i.e., concepts that cannot be distinguished from other concepts) are also identified, guiding the