Knowledge structuring and representation in requirement specification

ABSTRACT

On the basis of some experience in the use of UML-based methods, we believe that a more refined and stringent structuring of the knowledge in the Requirement Specification may help the specification process and make easier the consistency checks among the various components. Thus we propose a way of structuring and representing the Requirement Specification artifacts that presents a number of novelties w.r.t. the best-known current methods. Our proposal is multiview, use case-driven and UML-based; thus also object-oriented. However, also benefitting of some earlier work, notably in the Structured Analysis, we take a rather abstract view, trying to avoid a preemptive decision on the classes structuring the system to build; that is achieved not only making a sharp distinction between business/domain modelling and the system, but also dealing with the system at the requirement level as a black box, providing only the minimal structure needed to express the interactions with the context.

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