Visual language representation for use case evolution and traceability

The primary goal of this research is to assist non-technical stakeholders involved in requirements engineering with a comprehensible method for managing changing requirements within a specific domain. An important part of managing evolving requirements over time is to maintain a temporal ordering of the changes and to support traceability of the modifications. This research defines a semi-formal syntactical and semantic definition of such a method using a visual language, RE/TRAC (Requirements Evolution with Traceability), and a supporting formal semantic notation RE/TRAC-SEM. RE/TRAC-SEM is an ontological specification employing a combination of models, including verbal definitions, set theory and a string language specification RE/TRAC-CF. The language RE/TRAC-CF enables the separation of the syntactical description of the visual language from the semantic meaning of the model, permitting varying target representations and taking advantage of existing efficient parsing algorithms for context-free grammars. As an application of the RE/TRAC representation, this research depicts the hierarchical step-wise refinement of UML use case diagrams to demonstrate evolving system requirements. In the current arena of software development, where systems are described using platform independent models (PIMs) which emphasize the front-end design process, requirements and design documents, including the use cases, have become the primary artifacts of the system. Therefore the management of requirements’ evolution has become even more critical in the creation and maintenance of systems

Uso de escenarios en la derivación de software

Esta tesis presenta una estrategia en la Ingeniería de Requisitos, denominada SDRES, que intenta abordar temas poco tratados en la práctica real, tales como los cambios constantes en los requisitos, defectos del software originados en los requisitos, el contexto organizacional que rodea al sistema de software y la consideración de requisitos de calidad. Esta estrategia está dirigida por modelos (Léxico Extendido del Lenguaje, Escenarios y Documento de Requisitos) y orientada al cliente, por ello utiliza sus modelos escritos en lenguaje natural como medio de comunicación y elicitación. SDRES tiene en cuenta la calidad de los modelos que produce mediante procesos de verificación y validación. Para cada actividad de la estrategia se presenta un conjunto de heurísticas y recomendaciones. Se encara el tema de evolución y versionado de los modelos, así como distintas modalidades de utilizar la estrategia según la complejidad del problema, el conocimiento sobre el mismo y otras características.The present thesis shows a Requirements Engineering strategy, called SDRES, which proposes to face topics rarely treated in real practice, such as continuous changes in requirements, software defects brought in requirements, the organisational context surrounding the software system and the quality treatment of requirements. This strategy is driven by models (Language Extended Lexicon, Scenarios and Software Requirements Specification) and oriented to the client. Therefore it uses models written in natural language as means of communication and elicitation. SDRES keeps in mind the quality of the produced models by means of verification and validation processes. For each activity of the strategy a set of heuristic and recommendations is presented. The evolution topic and model versioning is treated, as well as different modalities to use the strategy according to the complexity of the problem, the knowledge on the problem and other characteristics.Es revisado por: http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/9659Facultad de Ciencias Exacta