Checklists, Templates, and Services for Requirements Modeling Language Design

Abstract

This chapter presents three simple tools called language checklists, templates, and services, and explains why and how they are used in this book. They help make it manageable to define many languages, compare them, and carry their features from one to another. Language checklists give items to include in a definition of a requirements modeling language and its parts. Each checklist suggests a template, so that when it is relevant to define a requirements modeling language or its part according to a checklist, there is a corresponding template to fill out. Services describe specific problem-solving tasks that a language and relevant algorithms automate for a human problem solver. I use services to describe the purpose of a language and its parts in problem solving, checklists to avoid missing important parts of definitions, and Templates to standardize the presentation of definitions.