Reusing similar requirements fragments is among the promising ways to reduce elaboration time and increase requirements quality. This paper investigates the application of analogical reasoning techniques to complete partial requirements specifications. A case base is assumed to be available; it contains requirements frameworks involving goals, constraints, objects, actions, and agents from systems already specified. We show how a rich requirements meta-model coupled with an expressive formal assertion language may increase the effectiveness of analogical reuse. An acquisition problem is first specified by the requirements engineer as a query formulated in the vocabulary of the specification fragments built so far. Source cases and partial mappings are found by query generalization followed by search through the case base. Once analogies have been confirmed, mappings are completed by use of relevance rules that distinguish in the formal assertions what is relevant to the analogy from what is irrelevant. Best analogies are then selected and extended in such a way that logical properties of the answers to the query may be verified, thus increasing confidence in the analogy. The approach is illustrated by analogical acquisition of specifications of a meeting scheduler in the KAOS goal-oriented specification language.

. This paper describes a computational model of similarity developed to support analogical software reuse. Similarity is computed from conceptual descriptions of software artifacts of any substance (i.e code, design or specification artifacts). This computation is restricted by an axiomatic framework realizing properties of similarity assessments by humans and analogical reasoning and exploits the semantics of three common conceptual modeling abstractions, namely the classification, the generalization and the attribution. An operationalization of the model is presented together with a prototype implementing it. The consistency of the estimates of the operational model with respect to similarity assessments of software engineers and its recall performance are evaluated, in a preliminary experiment. 1 INTRODUCTION In this paper, we define a model for estimating the similarity between software artifacts so as to promote their analogical reuse. Reuse has been acknowledged as a form of an...

A serious problem in the classification of software project artefacts for reuse is the natural partitioning of classification terms into many separate domains of discourse. This problem is particularly pronounced when dealing with requirements artefacts that need to be matched with design components in the refinement process. In such a case, requirements can be described with terms drawn from a problem domain (e.g. games), whereas designs with the use of terms characteristic for the solution domain (e.g. implementation). The two domains have not only distinct terminology, but also different semantics and use of their artefacts. This paper describes a method of cross-domain classification of requirements texts with a view to facilitate their reuse and their refinement into reusable design components. Keywords Requirements Refinement, Reuse, Information Retrieval 1. Introduction Reuse of development work-products in the earliest phases of software life-cycle, e.g. requirements engine...

. We present our approach to defining similarity between software artifacts and discuss its potential exploitation in software reuse by analogy. We first establish properties of similarity which support its role in retrieving and mapping software descriptions. Then we develop a systematic basis for comparison within a fairly general conceptual modelling framework, whereby comparable elements of the descriptions of software objects and corresponding similarity criteria are identified. Finally, a general form of distance metrics for the computation of similarity measures is defined.

In order to reduce the costs for systems development, methods for the reuse of specification knowledge have been developed. One approach is to build libraries of reusable analysis patterns, i.e. abstract models describing the generic features of a type of situation that may occur in many different domains. In this paper, we propose a novel analysis pattern based on a deontic perspective. The basic components of this pattern are object types describing obligations, the parties involved in these obligations and their respective roles, and the speech acts that create and manage the obligations. We argue that this pattern captures specification knowledge at an appropriate level of abstraction, has a wide applicability, and effectively supports designers in the construction of models. Furthermore, we show how deontic objects at different levels are interrelated. 1. Introduction When constructing large information systems, the key to success lies in eliciting and representing requ...

Most software reuse research has ignored the role of the software engineer. However, software engineers tend to be better reasoners and have more experiences to recall than tool-based reuse mechanisms. This paper argues for integrating software engineers into existing reuse paradigms and providing tool support to assist problem description and component understanding, selection and adaptation. However, empirical studies indicate that these reuse tasks are difficult, even for experienced software engineers. Therefore, guidelines and a high-level architecture for design of tool support are based on reports of behaviour and problems arising during reuse. 1: Introduction Many technical solutions to software reuse problems have failed to result in widespread reuse. One reason may be that these solutions ignore human involvement. This paper investigates specific problems which arise from excluding software developers from the reuse process and proposes solutions based on human involvement fo...

: In order to reduce the costs for systems development, methods for the reuse of specification knowledge have been developed. One approach is to build libraries of reusable specification patterns, i.e. abstract models describing the generic features of a type of situation that may occur in many different domains. In this paper, we propose a novel specification pattern based on a deontic perspective. The basic components of this pattern are object types describing obligations, the parties involved in these obligations and their respective roles, and the speech acts that create and delete the obligations. We argue that this pattern captures specification knowledge at an appropriate level of abstraction, has a wide applicability, and effectively supports designers in the construction of models. Furthermore a number of instances of this pattern are analysed and classified in different categories. 1 Introduction When constructing large information systems, the key to success lies...