Skip to main content
Log in

Integrating ontologies, model driven, and CNL in a multi-viewed approach for requirements engineering

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Requirements Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Research in requirements engineering (RE) has been growing in the last few years. RE researchers are generally concerned with a set of open issues such as: (i) the need for a well-defined process to identify and specify the requirements scope, (ii) suitable mechanisms to support communication among different stakeholders and development teams involved in the RE process, (iii) mechanisms to deal with the inherent volatility of requirements, and (iv) the need for a traceability scheme to help managing requirements in the downstream phases of the development process. In this work, we address some of these open issues by proposing the use of an iterative and incremental model-driven RE process combined with the employment of different notations such as controlled natural language and ontology in each activity of RE process. Based on the argument that there is no single notation suitable to represent requirements from the different perspectives of all the stakeholders and development teams, we propose a RE process encompassing different views, representing each perspective. This paper describes the proposed process, its tool support, and presents a controlled experiment that illustrates the proposal and evaluates its benefits.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://www.w3c.org.

  2. http://www.eclipse.org/uml2.

  3. http://aosd.di.fct.unl.pt/.

References

  1. Nuseibeh B, Easterbrook S (2000) Requirements engineering: a roadmap. In: ICSE—future of SE track, pp 35–46. http://blueciteseer.ist.psu.edu/article/nuseibeh00requirement.html

  2. González-Baixauli B, Laguna M, Crespo Y (2005) Product lines, features, and MDD. In: EWMT 2005 workshop

  3. Gómez-Pérez A, Fernández-López M, Corcho O (2004) Ontological engineering: with examples from the areas of knowledge management, e-commerce and the semantic web. Springer

  4. Paulk M, Weber C, Curtis B, Chrissis M (1995) The capability maturity model: guidelines for improving the software process. Addison-Wesley/Longman Publishing, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  5. Pressman R (2005) Software engineering: a practitioner’s approach. McGraw-Hill, New York

    Google Scholar 

  6. Sommerville I (2001) Software engineering, 6th edn. Addison-Wesley, Harlow

    Google Scholar 

  7. Reubenstein H, Waters R (1991) The requirements apprentice: automated assistance for requirements acquisition. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 17(3):226–240

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Walz D, Elam J, Curtis B (1993) Inside a software design team: knowledge acquisition, sharing, and integration. Commun ACM 36(10):63–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Wojcik R, Holmback H (1996) Getting a controlled language off the ground at Boeing. In: Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on controlled language applications, pp 22–31

  10. Mylopoulos J, Borgida A, Jarke M, Koubarakis M (1990) Telos: Representing knowledge about information systems. ACM Trans Info Syst 8(4):325–362

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Johnson W, Feather M, Harris D (1992) Representation and presentation of requirements knowledge. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 18(10):853–869

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Gordon M (2004) Knowledge representation: logical, philosophical, and computational foundations. Distrib Syst Online IEEE 5(1):9.1–9.3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Wang S, Jin L, Jin C (2006) Ontology definition metamodel based consistency checking of UML models. In: 10th International conference on computer supported cooperative work in design, pp 1–5

  14. Donini F, Lenzerini M, Nardi D, Schaerf A (1996) Reasoning in description logics. In: Brewka G (ed) Principles of knowledge representation and reasoning. Studies in logic, language and information. CLSI Publications, pp 193–238

  15. Lenzerini M (1996) Tbox and abox reasoning in expressive description logics. In: Proceedings of KR-96. Morgan Kaufmann, pp 316–327

  16. Christel M, Kang K (1992) Issues in requirements elicitation. Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute

  17. Carter RA, Anton AI, Dagnino A, Williams L (2001) Evolving beyond requirements creep: a risk-based evolutionary prototyping model. In: Proceedings of IEEE 5th international symposium on requirements engineering (RE’01), pp 94–101

  18. Espindola R, Lopes L, Prikladnicki R, Audy J (2005) Uma Abordagem Baseada em Gestão do Conhecimento para Gerência de Requisitos em Desenvolvimento Distribuído de Software. In: VIII workshop on requirements engineering

  19. Sage A, Palmer J (1990) Software systems engineering. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  20. Macaulay L, Flower C, Kirby M, Hutt A (1990) USTM: a new approach to requirements specification. Interact Comput 2(1):92–118

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Antón A, Potts C (2001) Functional paleontology: system evolution as the user sees it. In: Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on software engineering. IEEE Computer Society, pp 421–430

  22. Stark G, Oman P, Skillicorn A, Ameele A (1999) An examination of the effects of requirements changes on software maintenance releases. J Softw Maintenance 11(5):293–310

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Dubois E, Hagelstein J, Rifaut A (1989) Formal requirements engineering with ERAE. Philips J Res 43(4):393–414

    Google Scholar 

  24. Al-Rawas A, Easterbrook S (1996) Communication problems in requirements engineering: a field study

  25. Bhat J, Gupta M, Murthy S, Technologies I (2006) Overcoming requirements engineering challenges: lessons from offshore outsourcing. Softw IEEE 23(5):38–44

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Goguen JA, Linde C (1993) Techniques for requirements elimination. In: Proceedings of international symposium on requirements engineering. IEEE CS Press, Los Alamitos, pp 152–164. http://blueciteseer.ist.psu.edu/goguen93techniques.html

  27. Nurmuliani N, Zowghi D, Powell S (2004) Analysis of requirements volatility during software development life cycle. In: Software engineering conference, 2004. Proceedings 2004 Australian, pp 28–37

  28. Breitman K, do Prado Leite J (2004) Lexicon based ontology construction. In: LNCS, vol 19–34

  29. Bryant B, Lee B, Cao F, Zhao W, Burt C, Gray J, Raje R, Olson A, Auguston M (2003) From natural language requirements to executable models of software components. In: Proceedings of the monterey workshop on software engineering for embedded systems: from requirements to implementation, pp 51–58. http://blueciteseer.ist.psu.edu/bryant03from.html

  30. Debnath N, Leonardi M, Mauco M, Montejano G, Riesco D (2008) Improving model driven architecture with requirements models. In: 5th International conference on information technology: new generations, 2008 (ITNG 2008), pp 21–26

  31. van Lamsweerde A (2008) Requirements engineering: from craft to discipline. In: Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on foundations of software engineering. ACM, New York, pp 238–249

  32. White S (2004) Process modeling notations and workflow patterns. In: Workflow handbook, pp 265–294

  33. Kavakli E, Loucopoulos P (2008) Goal driven requirements engineering: evaluation of current methods. In: Proceedings of 8th CAiSE/IFIP8, vol 1

  34. Kaiya H, Saeki M (2006) Using domain ontology as domain knowledge for requirements elicitation. In: Proceedings of the 14th IEEE international requirements engineering conference (RE’06). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, pp 186–195

  35. Gotel O, Finkelstein C (1994, April) An analysis of the requirements traceability problem. In: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on requirements engineering, pp 94–101

  36. Gotel O, Finkelstein A (1997, January) Extended requirements traceability: results of an industrial case study. In: Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE international symposium on requirements engineering, pp 169–178

  37. Cleland-Huang J, Chang C, Christensen M (2003) Event-based traceability for managing evolutionary change. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 29(9):796–810

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Egyed A (2003) A scenario-driven approach to trace dependency analysis. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 29(2):116–132

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Fuchs NE, Schwertel U, Schwitter R (1999, June) Attempto controlled English—not just another logic specification language. In: Flener P (ed) Logic-based program synthesis and transformation. No. 1559 in Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 8th International workshop LOPSTR’98. Springer, Manchester

  40. Mellor S (2004) MDA distilled: principles of model driven architecture. Addison-Wesley Professional, Canada

    Google Scholar 

  41. Kleppe A, Warmer J, Bast W (2003) MDA explained: the model driven architecture: practice and promise. Co., Inc. Addison-Wesley/Longman Publishing, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  42. Wohlin C, Höst M, Henningsson K (2003) Empirical research methods in software engineering. In: Conradi R, Wang AI (eds) Empirical methods and studies in software engineering, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 7–23

    Google Scholar 

  43. OMG (2009) OMG unified modeling language TM (OMG UML), Superstructure. http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?formal/09-02-02.pdf. Accessed 10 May 2010

  44. Rumbaugh J, Jacobson I, Booch G (2004) Unified modeling language reference manual, The Pearson Higher Education

  45. Breitman K, do Prado Leite J (2003, September) Ontology as a requirements engineering product. In: 11th IEEE international conference on requirements engineering proceedings, pp 309–319

  46. Kaljurand K (2008) ACE view—an ontology and rule editor based on Attempto Controlled English. In: 5th OWL experiences and directions workshop (OWLED 2008). Karlsruhe, 26–27 October, 12 pp

  47. Smith M, Welty C, McGuinness D (2004) Owl web ontology language guide. W3C recommendation 10

  48. Stumme G, Maedche A (2001) FCA-merge: bottom-up merging of ontologies. In: 7th international conference on artificial intelligence (IJCAI01), pp 225–230

  49. Steve G, Gangemi A, Pisanelli D (1998) lntegrating medical terminologies with ONIONS methodology. In: Information modelling and knowledge bases, vol IX

  50. Noy N, Musen M (2000) PROMPT: algorithm and tool for automated ontology merging and alignment. In: Proceedings of the national conference on artificial intelligence (AAAI), pp 450–455

  51. Knublauch H (2004) Ontology-driven software development in the context of the semantic web: an example scenario with protege/OWL. In: Proceedings of MDSW2004, Monterey

  52. Sirin E, Parsia B (2004) Pellet: an owl dl reasoner. In: 2004 International workshop on description logics. Citeseer, p 212

  53. Tsarkov D, Horrocks I (2006) FaCT++ description logic reasoner: system description. In: Automated reasoning, pp 292–297

  54. Fuchs NE, Kaljurand K, Kuhn T (2008) Discourse representation structures for ACE 6.0. Tech. Rep. ifi-2008.02, Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, Zurich

  55. Colomb R, Raymond K, Hart L, Emery P, Welty C, Xie G, Kendall E (2006) Version 3.3: The object management group ontology definition metamodel. In: Ontologies for software engineering and software technology, pp 1–25

  56. Jouault F, Allilaire F, Bézivin J, Kurtev I, Valduriez P (2006) ATL: a QVT-like transformation language. In: Companion to the 21st ACM SIGPLAN symposium on object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications. ACM, p 720

  57. Catalog Of OMG Modeling and metadata specifications. Available at: http://www.omg.org/technology/documents/modeling_spec_catalog.htm#UML

  58. MOF 2.0/XMI (XML Metadata Interchange) Mapping specification, v2.1.1. OMG Available Specification, formal/07-12-01. Available at http://www.omg.org/docs/formal/07-12-01.pdf

  59. Jedlitschka A, Pfahl D (2005) Reporting guidelines for controlled experiments in software engineering. In: International symposium on empirical software engineering, p 10

  60. Basili V, Caldiera G, Rombach H (1994) The goal question metric approach. Encycl Softw Eng 1:528–532

    Google Scholar 

  61. Briand L, Penta MD, Labiche Y (2004) Assessing and improving state-based class testing: a series of experiments. Trans. Softw Eng 30(11):770–793

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Gravino C, Scanniello G, Tortora G (2010) An empirical investigation on dynamic modeling in requirements engineering. Lect Notes Comput Sci 5301/2010:615–629. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-87875-9_43

    Google Scholar 

  63. Soares S, Laureano E, Borba P (2002) Implementing distribution and persistence aspects with aspect. J ACM SIGPLAN Notices 37(11):174–190

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. Guarino N, Welty C (2002) Evaluating ontological decisions with OntoClean. Commun ACM 45(2):65

    Article  Google Scholar 

  65. Oppenheim AN (1992) Questionnaire design, interviewing and attitude measurement. Pinter, London

    Google Scholar 

  66. Gliem JA, Gliem RR (2003, October) Calculating, interpreting, and reporting Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient for Likert-type scales. In: Midwest research-to-practice conference in adult, continuing, and community education, pp 82–88

  67. Cronbach LJ (1951) Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika 16:297–334

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. Hatcher L (1994) A step-by-step approach to using the SAS(R) system for factor analysis and structural equation modeling. SAS Institute, Cary

    Google Scholar 

  69. Nunnaly J (1978) Psychometric theory. McGraw-Hill, New York

    Google Scholar 

  70. IBM SPSS Statistics 19. Available at: http://www.spss.com. Accessed Dec 2010

  71. Gašević D, Kaviani N, Milanović M (2009) Ontologies and software engineering. In: Staab S, Studer R (eds) International handbooks on information systems, part 5, handbook on ontologies, Springer, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-540-70999-2 (print) 978-3-540-92673-3 (online)

  72. Maedche A (2002) Ontology learning for the semantic web. Kluwer, Boston

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  73. Leite JCSP, Franco APM (1993) A strategy for conceptual model acquisition. In: 1st IEEE international symposium on requirements engineering. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, pp 243–246

  74. Vongdoiwang W, Batanov DN (2006) An ontology-based procedure for generating object model from text description. Published in journal: Knowl Inf Syst (KAIS): February 2006. Knowl Inf Syst (2006):93–108. doi:10.1007/s10115-005-0218-5

  75. Völkel M (2006, May) RDFReactor—from ontologies to programatic data access. In: Proceedings of the Jena user conference, 2006. HP, Bristol

  76. Won Lee S, Gandhi R (2005) Ontology-based active requirements engineering framework. In: Proceedings of the 12th Asia-Pacific software engineering conference, pp 481–490

  77. Dobson G, Sawyer P (2006) Revisiting ontology-based requirements engineering in the age of the semantic web. In: Dependable requirements engineering of computerised systems at NPPs

  78. Lin J, Fox MS, Bilgic T (1996) A requirement ontology for engineering design. In: Proceedings of 3rd international conference on concurrent engineering, pp 343–351. A revised version appears in Concurr Eng Res Appl 4(4):279–291

  79. Zong-yong L, Zhi-xu W, Ai-hui Z, Yong X (2007, July) The domain ontology and domain rules based requirements model checking. Int J Softw Eng Appl 1(1):89–100

    Google Scholar 

  80. Oberle D (2006) Semantic management of middleware, vol I of The semantic web and beyond. Springer, New York

    Google Scholar 

  81. Happel H-J, Seedor S (2006) Applications of ontologies in software engineering. In: International workshop on semantic web enabled software engineering (SWESE’06)

  82. Kittredge RI (2003) Sublanguages and controlled languages. In: Mitkov R (ed) The Oxford handbook of computational linguistics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 430–447

    Google Scholar 

  83. Bryant B, Lee B (2002) Two-level grammar as an object-oriented requirements specification language. In: Proceedings of the 35th annual Hawaii international conference on system sciences (Hicss’02)-vol 9 (7–10 Jan 2002), HICSS. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, p 280

  84. Leal LN, Pires PF, Campos MLM, Delicato FC (2006) Natural MDA: controlled natural language for action specifications on model driven development, on the move to meaningful internet systems 2006: CoopIS, DOA, GADA, and ODBASE, doi:10.1007/11914853_33, pp 551–568

  85. Raistrick C, Francis P, Wright J (2004) Model driven architecture with executable UML. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-53771-1

  86. Kalnins A, Kalnina E, Celms E, Sostaks E (2010) From requirements to code in a model driven way, Lecture Notes in Computer Science v. 5968/2010 (Advances in Databases and Information Systems), pp 161–168. Springer, Berlin, ISBN: 978-3-642-12081-7, ISSN: 0302-9743 (print), pp 1611–3349 (online), doi:10.1007/978-3-642-12082-4

  87. Smialek M, Bojarski J, Nowakowski W et al (2007) Complementary use case scenario representations based on domain vocabularies. In: Engels G, Opdyke B, Schmidt DC, Weil F (eds) MODELS 2007, LNCS, vol 4735. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 544–558

  88. ReDSeeDS, Requirements Driven Software Development System Project. EU 6th framework IST project (IST-33596), http://www.redseeds.eu

  89. Kalnins A, Barzdins J, Celms E (2005) Model transformation language MOLA. In: Aßmann U, Aksit M, Rensink A (eds) MDAFA 2003, LNCS, vol 3599. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 62–76

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paulo F. Pires.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pires, P.F., Delicato, F.C., Cóbe, R. et al. Integrating ontologies, model driven, and CNL in a multi-viewed approach for requirements engineering. Requirements Eng 16, 133–160 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-011-0116-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-011-0116-1

Keywords

Navigation