A knowledge-based system for improving the consistency between object models and use case narratives

  • Authors:

  • Narasimha Bolloju;Christoph Schneider;Vijayan Sugumaran

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong;Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong;School of Business Administration, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA and Department of Service Systems Management and Engineering, Sogang Business School, Sogang University, Seoul 121-742, Re ...

  • Venue:
  • Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

In today's systems development environments, object models are playing an increasingly important role in contributing to the agility and flexibility expected of the information systems being built. While current computer-aided software engineering tools can aid in creating object models, they do not provide much support in ensuring that the object models created are consistent with the specifications in use case narratives. This paper presents a methodology and a knowledge-based system to facilitate the verification of consistency of a given object model against a set of use case narratives. The methodology is implemented as a prototype knowledge-based extension to an open source CASE tool. The prototype's ability to reliably extract relevant information from use case narratives and its role in verifying the consistency of object models have been evaluated using a laboratory experiment. By analyzing use case narratives utilizing natural language processing techniques and applying collaboration patterns and heuristics, this methodology can determine missing and invalid model elements to guide the analyst in creating object models that are consistent with the requirements specified in a set of use case narratives. The results from this design science research indicate that the prototype system can be a useful tool to assist in this process.