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On the systematic transformation of requirements to specifications

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Abstract

Formal approaches to development are widely acknowledged to have difficulty in the validation of real-world requirements; in contrast, non-formal approaches find it difficult to identify the formal structures in requirements that are useful in a solution. That the problems that computing treats are embedded in the real world with solutions being an essentially formal machine means this dichotomy will always exist, with some new approach to the development needed which can draw a boundary between what is formalised and what can be left informal. In this paper, we show how the natural cause-and-effect structures that can be found in non-formal requirements descriptions can be used systematically to arrive at a software specification. The theoretical contribution of the work is the formalisation of Jackson’s idea of problem progression in his Problem Frames framework through the use of a graph grammar to capture problem models as graphs and their manipulation as transformations. The approach is illustrated through a substantial benchmark example—Swartout’s and Balzer’s package router. We also report on the results of an initial empirical evaluation of the approach based on a prototype problem progression tool we have constructed.

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Notes

  1. We are indebted to Pamela Zave, who through her comments on an earlier manuscript, helped us to clarify the nature of our contribution.

  2. We use capitalisation, as here, to distinguish Problem Frames as a framework from the tools provided by that framework, such as problem diagrams and context diagrams.

  3. There is but a single requirement in a problem diagram; this can, of course, be a conjunction of many subsidiary ‘requirements.’

  4. The figure was named ‘a progression of problems’ by Jackson, on page 103 in [7].

  5. As usual, we indicate the transitive closure of a relation through the + decoration.

  6. What Problem Frames refers to as state, [13] refers to as conditions.

  7. Here, ∘ is functional composition.

  8. For brevity, and as m is an injection, vertex names are left unchanged.

  9. For brevity we will, as in Fig. 4, write l V (v) as l v , l E (e) as l e .

  10. With changes italicised.

  11. OMG. Model Driven Architecture. http://www.omg.org/mda/.

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Acknowledgments

Zhi Li’s research is sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.61262004, and the authors' joint research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation of Guangxi Province under Grant No.2012GXNSFCA053010, and the Guangxi Scientific Research and Technological Development Project under Contract No.(Gui-Ke-He)1347004-22.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science and Information Technology, Guangxi Normal University, No. 15 Yu Cai Road, Guilin, 541004, Guangxi, People’s Republic of China

    Zhi Li

  2. Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies (Peking University), Ministry of Education, Beijing, 100871, China

    Zhi Li

  3. Centre of Research in Computing, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK7 6AA, UK

    Jon G. Hall & Lucia Rapanotti

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  1. Zhi Li
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Correspondence to Zhi Li.

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Li, Z., Hall, J.G. & Rapanotti, L. On the systematic transformation of requirements to specifications. Requirements Eng 19, 397–419 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-013-0173-8

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