A concern-based approach to generating formal requirements specifications

Abstract

Document driven requirements analysis, as proposed by Prof. David Parnas, which has had some success in practice, focuses on creating concise and complete formal requirements documents to serve as references for formal verification, software design, implementation, testing, inspection, and so on. However, at present large number of requirements documents are still written in natural languages. Therefore, generating formal requirements specification from informal textual requirements description has become a big challenge. In this paper, a concern-based approach to generating formal requirements specification from textual requirements document is proposed, which applies separation of concerns during requirements analysis and utilizes concerns and their relationships to bridge the gap between textual requirements statements and formal requirements documentation. A tool suite has been developed for supporting our approach, and a case study has been performed to illustrate the process of our approach. Results indicate that our approach facilitates guiding the process of formal requirements documentation with concerns and their relationships.

Keywords

document driven requirements analysis method / separation of concerns / concern relationship graph / 4-variable model / formal requirements documentation / requirements management

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Acknowledgement

We are grateful for the financial support of China High-tech Research and Development Program (863 Program) (2007AA01Z123).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg