Formal tools for managing inconsistency and change in RE

A. Ghose, University of Wollongong

Article comments

This paper originally appeared as: Ghose, AK, Formal tools for managing inconsistency and change in RE, Tenth International Workshop on Software Specification and Design, 5-7 November 2000, 171-181. Copyright IEEE 2000.

Abstract

Dealing with inconsistencies and change in requirements engineering (RE) is known to be a difficult problem. We propose a formal, integrated approach to inconsistency handling and requirements evolution with a focus on providing automated support. We define a novel representation scheme that is expressive and able to maintain several key semantic distinctions. Based on this scheme, we define a toolkit of inconsistency handling technique. We define a principled process for evolving such specifications, with minimal computational cost and user intervention. Finally, we describe the REFORM system which implements some of these techniques.