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A Refinement Calculus for Requirements Engineering Based on Argumentation Theory

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Conceptual Modeling (ER 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12400))

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Abstract

The Requirements Engineering (RE) process starts with initial requirements elicited from stakeholders – however conflicting, unattainable, incomplete and ambiguous – and iteratively refines them into a specification that is consistent, complete, valid and unambiguous. We propose a novel RE process in the form of a calculus where the process is envisioned as an iterative application of refinement operators, with each operator removing a defect from the current requirements. Our proposal is motivated by the dialectic and incremental nature of RE activities. The calculus, which we call CaRE, casts the RE problem as an iterative argument between stakeholders, who point out defects (ambiguity, incompleteness, etc.) of existing requirements, and then propose refinements to address those defects, thus leading to the construction of a refinement graph. This graph is then a conceptual model of an RE process enactment. The semantics of these models is provided by Argumentation Theory, where a requirement may be attacked for having a defect, which in turn may be eliminated by a refinement.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this paper, we adapt a version of , by simplifying and specializing it to support reasoning in our calculus. Our version is partially inspired by  [18].

  2. 2.

    Henceforth, we will use Req, Defect and Ref as predicates in Prolog: variables (in italics) match possible values, and underscores \(\_\) are wildcards. In logical formulas, wildcards are existentially quantified anonymous variables.

  3. 3.

    When clear from the context, we will henceforth drop the subscript \(\mathrm {RG}\).

  4. 4.

    This is available in a technical report providing further details on the application of CaRE  [19].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université du Luxembourg, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

    Yehia ElRakaiby

  2. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Alexander Borgida

  3. CNR-ISTI, Pisa, Italy

    Alessio Ferrari

  4. University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    John Mylopoulos

  5. University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    John Mylopoulos

Authors
  1. Yehia ElRakaiby
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  2. Alexander Borgida
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  3. Alessio Ferrari
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  4. John Mylopoulos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yehia ElRakaiby .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Gillian Dobbie

  2. University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Ulrich Frank

  3. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Gerti Kappel

  4. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Stephen W. Liddle

  5. University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, Austria

    Heinrich C. Mayr

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ElRakaiby, Y., Borgida, A., Ferrari, A., Mylopoulos, J. (2020). A Refinement Calculus for Requirements Engineering Based on Argumentation Theory. In: Dobbie, G., Frank, U., Kappel, G., Liddle, S.W., Mayr, H.C. (eds) Conceptual Modeling. ER 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12400. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_1

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