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Expanding Normalized Systems from textual domain descriptions using TEMOS

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Abstract

Functional requirements on a software system are traditionally captured as text that describes the expected functionality in the domain of a real-world system. Natural language processing methods allow us to extract the knowledge from such requirements and transform it, e.g., into a model. Moreover, these methods can improve the quality of the requirements, which usually suffer from ambiguity, incompleteness, and inconsistency. This paper presents a novel approach to using natural language processing. We use the method of grammatical inspection to find specific patterns in the description of functional requirement specifications (written in English). Then, we transform the requirements into a model of Normalized Systems elements. This may realize a possible component of the eagerly awaited text-to-software pipeline. The input of this method is represented by textual requirements. Its output is a running prototype of an information system created using Normalized Systems (NS) techniques. Therefore, the system is ready to accept further enhancements, e.g., custom code fragments, in an evolvable manner ensured by compliance with the NS principles. A demonstration of pipeline implementation is also included in this paper. The text processing part of our pipeline extends the existing pipeline implemented in our system TEMOS, where we propose and implement methods of checking the quality of textual requirements concerning ambiguity, incompleteness, and inconsistency.

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Code Availability

Source codes are available from David Šenkýř based on a request. The NS tools are available from NSX.

Notes

  1. https://spacy.io/models/en

  2. https://universaldependencies.org/u/dep/index.html

  3. https://www.conceptnet.io

  4. https://spacy.io

  5. https://www.lumoslearning.com/llwp/free-text-complexity-analysis.html

  6. http://nlrp.ipd.kit.edu/index.php/Category:Language:English

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Acknowledgements

The research was performed in collaboration of Czech Technical University in Prague, University of Antwerp, and NSX bvba. The research was supported by Czech Technical University in Prague grant No. SGS20/209/OHK3/3T/18.

Funding

The research was supported (in terms of funding) by Czech Technical University in Prague grant No. SGS20/209/OHK3/3T/18.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Technical University in Prague, Thákurova 9, 16000 Praha 6, Prague, Czech Republic

    David Šenkýř, Marek Suchánek, Petr Kroha & Robert Pergl

  2. Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium

    Marek Suchánek & Herwig Mannaert

Authors
  1. David Šenkýř
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  2. Marek Suchánek
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  3. Petr Kroha
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  4. Herwig Mannaert
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  5. Robert Pergl
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Contributions

David Šenkýř designed and implemented the enhancements in TEMOS in terms of NLP and mapping to the NS metamodel.

Realization of the NS module in TEMOS including export functionality and text-to-NS pipeline has been done by Marek Suchánek.

Supervising the work, collaboration on evaluation has been done by Petr Kroha, Herwig Mannaert, and Robert Pergl.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Šenkýř.

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Conflicts of Interest/Competing Interests

Marek Suchánek collaborates on research with NSX bvba (University of Antwerp spin-off) as being PhD student with topic oriented on Normalized Systems. Herwig Mannert as one of the NS Theory authors is also one of the NSX bvba founders.

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Availability of Data and Material

Not applicable. There are no datasets created in this research. Source codes are available based on a request.

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Šenkýř, D., Suchánek, M., Kroha, P. et al. Expanding Normalized Systems from textual domain descriptions using TEMOS. J Intell Inf Syst 59, 391–414 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10844-022-00706-8

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