Transforming timing diagrams into knowledge acquisition in automated specification

Abstract

Requirements engineering is an important part of developing programs. It is an essential stage of the software development process that defines what a product or system should to achieve. The UML Timing diagram and Knowledge Acquisition in Automated Specification (KAOS) model are requirements engineering techniques. KAOS is a goal-oriented requirements approach while the Timing diagram is a graphical notation used for explaining software timing requirements. KAOS uses linear temporal logic (LTL) to describe time constraints in goal and operation models. Similarly, the Timing diagram can describe some temporal operators such as X (next), U (until) and R (release) over some period of time. Thus, our aim is to use the Timing diagram to generate parts of a KAOS model. In this paper we demonstrate techniques for creating a KAOS goal model from a Timing diagram. The Timing diagram which is used in this paper is adapted from the UML 2.0 Timing diagram and includes features to support translation into KAOS. We use a case study of a Lift system as an example to explain the translation processes described here