28,657 research outputs found
Attempto Controlled English (ACE)
Attempto Controlled English (ACE) allows domain specialists to interactively
formulate requirements specifications in domain concepts. ACE can be accurately
and efficiently processed by a computer, but is expressive enough to allow
natural usage. The Attempto system translates specification texts in ACE into
discourse representation structures and optionally into Prolog. Translated
specification texts are incrementally added to a knowledge base. This knowledge
base can be queried in ACE for verification, and it can be executed for
simulation, prototyping and validation of the specification.Comment: 13 pages, compressed, uuencoded Postscript, to be presented at CLAW
96, The First International Workshop on Controlled Language Applications,
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 26-27 March 199
ViSpec: A graphical tool for elicitation of MTL requirements
One of the main barriers preventing widespread use of formal methods is the
elicitation of formal specifications. Formal specifications facilitate the
testing and verification process for safety critical robotic systems. However,
handling the intricacies of formal languages is difficult and requires a high
level of expertise in formal logics that many system developers do not have. In
this work, we present a graphical tool designed for the development and
visualization of formal specifications by people that do not have training in
formal logic. The tool enables users to develop specifications using a
graphical formalism which is then automatically translated to Metric Temporal
Logic (MTL). In order to evaluate the effectiveness of our tool, we have also
designed and conducted a usability study with cohorts from the academic student
community and industry. Our results indicate that both groups were able to
define formal requirements with high levels of accuracy. Finally, we present
applications of our tool for defining specifications for operation of robotic
surgery and autonomous quadcopter safe operation.Comment: Technical report for the paper to be published in the 2015 IEEE/RSJ
International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems held in Hamburg,
Germany. Includes 10 pages and 19 figure
Detecting Conflicts and Inconsistencies in Web Application Requirements
Web applications evolve fast. One of the main reasons for this
evolution is that new requirements emerge and change constantly. These new
requirements are posed either by customers or they are the consequence of
users’ feedback about the application. One of the main problems when dealing
with new requirements is their consistency in relationship with the current
version of the application. In this paper we present an effective approach for
detecting and solving inconsistencies and conflicts in web software
requirements. We first characterize the kind of inconsistencies arising in web
applications requirements and then show how to isolate them using a modeldriven
approach. With a set of examples we illustrate our approach
Tools for producing formal specifications : a view of current architectures and future directions
During the last decade, one important contribution towards requirements engineering has been the advent of formal specification languages. They offer a well-defined notation that can improve consistency and avoid ambiguity in specifications.
However, the process of obtaining formal specifications that are consistent with the requirements is itself a difficult activity. Hence various researchers are developing systems that aid the transition from informal to formal specifications.
The kind of problems tackled and the contributions made by these proposed systems are very diverse. This paper brings these studies together to provide a vision for future architectures that aim to aid the transition from informal to formal specifications. The new architecture, which is based on the strengths of existing studies, tackles a
number of key issues in requirements engineering such as identifying ambiguities, incompleteness, and reusability.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the research problems that need to be addressed in order to realise the proposed architecture
Exploiting a Goal-Decomposition Technique to Prioritize Non-functional Requirements
Business stakeholders need to have clear and realistic goals if they want to meet commitments in application development. As a consequence, at early stages they prioritize requirements. However, requirements do change. The effect of change forces the stakeholders to balance alternatives and reprioritize requirements accordingly. In this paper we discuss the problem of priorities to non-functional requirements subjected to change. We, then, propose an approach to help smooth the impact of such changes. Our approach favors the translation of nonoperational specifications into operational definitions that can be evaluated once the system is developed. It uses the goal-question-metric method as the major support to decompose non-operational specifications into operational ones. We claim that the effort invested in operationalizing NFRs helps dealing with changing requirements during system development. Based on\ud
this transformation and in our experience, we provide guidelines to prioritize volatile non-functional requirements
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