An Automated Method for Identifying Inconsistencies Within Diagrammatic Software Requirements Specifications

<p>The development of large-scale composite software in a geographically distributed environment is an evolutionary process. Often in such evolving systems striving for consistency is complicated by many factors because development participants have various locations skills responsibilities roles opinions languages terminology and different degrees of abstraction they employ. This naturally leads to many partial specifications or viewpoints. These multiple views on the system being developed usually overlap. From another aspect these multiple views give rise to the potential for inconsistency. Existing CASE tools do not efficiently manage inconsistencies in distributed development environment for a large-scale project. Based on the ViewPoints framework the WHERE (Web-Based Hypertext Environment for requirements Evolution) toolkit aims to tackle inconsistency management issues within geographically distributed software development projects. Consequently WHERE project helps make more robust software and support software assurance process. The long term goal of WHERE tools aims to the inconsistency analysis and management in requirements specifications. A framework based on Graph Grammar theory and TCMJAVA toolkit is proposed to detect inconsistencies among viewpoints. This systematic approach uses three basic operations (UNION DIFFERENCE INTERSECTION) to study the static behaviors of graphic and tabular notations. From these operations subgraphs Query Selection Merge Replacement operations can be derived. This approach uses graph PRODUCTIONS (rewriting rules) to study the dynamic transformations of graphs. We discuss the feasibility of implementation these operations. Also We present the process of porting original TCM (Toolkit for Conceptual Modeling) project from C++ to Java programming language in this thesis.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p>