Abstract

Large-scale software development is an evolutionary process. In an evolving specification, multiple development participants often hold multiple, inconsistent views on the system being developed, and considerable effort is spent handling recurrent inconsistencies. Detecting and resolving inconsistencies is only part of the problem: a resolved inconsistency might not stay resolved as a specification evolves. Frameworks in which inconsistency is tolerated help by allowing resolution to be delayed. However, the evolution of a specification may affect both resolved and unresolved inconsistencies. We present and elaborate a framework in which software development knowledge is partitioned into multiple views called "ViewPoints". Inconsistencies between ViewPoints are managed by explicitly representing relationships between them, and recording both resolved and unresolved inconsistencies. We assume that ViewPoints will often be inconsistent with one another, and we ensure that a complete wor...

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