The Domain Theory for Requirements Engineering

  • Authors:
  • Alistair Sutcliffe;Neil Maiden

  • Affiliations:
  • City Univ., London, UK;City Univ., London, UK

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 1998

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Abstract

Retrieval, validation, and explanation tools are described for cooperative assistance during requirements engineering and are illustrated by a library system case study. Generic models of applications are reused as templates for modeling and critiquing requirements for new applications. The validation tools depend on a matching process which takes facts describing a new application and retrieves the appropriate generic model from the system library. The algorithms of the matcher, which implement a computational theory of analogical structure matching, are described. A theory of domain knowledge is proposed to define the semantics and composition of generic domain models in the context of requirements engineering. A modeling language and a library of models arranged in families of classes are described. The models represent the basic transaction processing or 'use case' for a class of applications. Critical difference rules are given to distinguish between families and hierarchical levels. Related work and future directions of the domain theory are discussed.