article

On the interplay between inconsistency and incompleteness in multi-perspective requirements specifications

Authors:

Ana Belén Barragáns Martínez,

José J. Pazos Arias,

Ana Fernández Vilas,

Jorge García Duque,

Martín López Nores,

Rebeca P. Díaz Redondo,

Yolanda Blanco FernándezAuthors Info & Claims

Information and Software Technology, Volume 50, Issue 4

Pages 296 - 321

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2007.02.001

Published: 01 March 2008 Publication History

Abstract

A major challenge for dealing with multi-perspective specifications, and more concretely, with merging of several descriptions or views is toleration of incompleteness and inconsistency: views may be inconclusive, and may have conflicts over the concepts being modeled. The desire of being able to tolerate both phenomena introduces the need to evaluate and quantify the significance of a detected inconsistency as well as to measure the degree of conflict and uncertainty of the merged view as the specification process evolves. We show in this paper to what extent disagreement and incompleteness are closely interrelated and play a central role to obtain a measure of the level of inconsistency and to define a merging operator whose aim is getting the model which best reflects the combined knowledge of all stakeholders. We will also propose two kinds of interesting and useful orderings among perspectives which are based on differences of behavior and inconsistency, respectively.

References

[1]

S. Easterbrook, E. Yu, J. Aranda, Y. Fan, J. Horkoff, M. Leica, R.A. Qadir, Do viewpoints lead to better conceptual models? An exploratory case study, in: Proceedings of the 13th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE'05), IEEE Computer Society, 2005, pp. 199-208.

[2]

B. Nuseibeh, J. Kramer, A. Finkelstein, ViewPoints: meaningful relationships are difficult!, in: Proceedings of International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'03). Invited Paper, IEEE Computer Society Press, Portland, Oregon, USA, 2003, pp. 676-681.

[3]

Sommerville, I. and Sawyer, P., Viewpoints: principles, problems and a practical approach to requirements engineering. Annals of Software Engineering. v3. 101-130.

[4]

J.C.S.P. Leite. Viewpoints on viewpoints, in: A. Finkelstein, G. Spanoudakis (Eds.), Joint Proceedings of the SIGSOFT'96 Workshops, Presented at Viewpoints 96: International Workshop on Multiple Perspectives in Software Development, ISBN 0-89791-867-3, San Francisco, USA, 1996, pp. 285-288.

[5]

L. Cholvy, A. Hunter, Information fusion in logic: a brief overview, in: Proceedings of the European Conference on Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty (ECSQARU'97), Vol. 1244 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, Bad Honnef, Germany, 1997, pp. 86-95.

[6]

B. Barragáns-Martínez, J.J. Pazos-Arias, A. Fernández-Vilas. On measuring levels of inconsistency in multi-perspective requirements specifications, in: Proceedings of the First Conference on the Principles of Software Engineering (PRISE'04), Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2004, pp. 21-30.

[7]

Barragáns-Martínez, B., Pazos-Arias, J.J. and Fernández-Vilas, A., Merging requirements views with incompleteness and inconsistency. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC'05), IEEE Computer Society Press, Brisbane, Australia. pp. 58-67.

[8]

B. Barragáns-Martínez, J.J. Pazos-Arias, A. Fernández-Vilas, J. García-Duque, M. López-Nores, R. Díaz-Redondo, Y. Blanco-Fernández, Composing multi-perspective software requirements specifications, International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 2007, in press.

[9]

Pazos-Arias, J.J. and García-Duque, J., SCTL-MUS: a formal methodology for software development of distributed systems. A case study. Formal Aspects of Computing. v13. 50-91.

[10]

R. Milner, Communication and Concurrency, International Series in Computer Science, Prentice-Hall, 1989.

[11]

S.C. Kleene, Introduction to Metamathematics, Vol. 1 of Bibliotheca Mathematica, North-Holland, 1952.

[12]

A. Hussain, M. Huth, On model checking multiple hybrid views, in: Proceedings of 1st International Symposium on Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Paphos, Cyprus, 2004.

[13]

Huth, M. and Pradhan, S., Model-checking view-based partial specifications. In: Brooks, S., Mislove, M. (Eds.), Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 45. Elsevier, Amsterdam.

[14]

Uchitel, S. and Chechik, M., Merging partial behavioural models. In: Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (SIGSOFT'04/FSE-12), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA. pp. 43-52.

[15]

Chechik, M., Devereux, B., Easterbrook, S. and Gurfinkel, A., Multi-valued symbolic model-checking. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. v12 i4. 371-408.

[16]

Nejati, S. and Chechik, M., Let's agree to disagree. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2005), ACM Press, Long Beach, California, USA. pp. 287-290.

[17]

Rashid, A., Moreira, A. and Araújo, J., Modularisation and composition of aspectual requirements. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD'03), ACM Press, Boston, USA. pp. 11-20.

[18]

Nuseibeh, B., To Be And Not To Be: On managing inconsistency in software development. In: Proceedings of 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design (IWSSD-8), IEEE Computer Society Press, Scloss Velen, Germany. pp. 164-169.

[19]

Easterbrook, S. and Nuseibeh, B., Managing inconsistencies in an evolving specification. In: Proceedings of 2nd IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (RE'95), IEEE Computer Society Press, York, UK. pp. 48-55.

[20]

Balzer, R., Tolerating inconsistency. In: Proceedings of 13rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'13), IEEE Computer Society Press, Austin, Texas, USA. pp. 158-165.

[21]

Finkelstein, A., Gabbay, D., Hunter, A., Kramer, J. and Nuseibeh, B., Inconsistency handling in multi-perspective specifications. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. v20 i8. 569-578.

[22]

Hunter, A. and Nuseibeh, B., Managing inconsistent specifications: reasoning, analysis and action. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. v7 i4. 335-367.

[23]

Hoare, C., Communicating Sequential Processes. 1985. Prentice-Hall International, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

[24]

Belnap, N.D., A useful four-valued logic. In: Dunn, J.M., Epstein, G. (Eds.), Modern Uses of Multiple-Valued Logic, D. Reidel, Dordrecht. pp. 7-37.

[25]

R. L. Kedian Mu, Zhi Jin, W. Liu, Measuring inconsistency in requirements specifications, in: Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty (ECSQARU'05), Vol. 3571 of Lecture Notes in Artifical Intelligence, Springer, Barcelona, Spain, 2005, pp. 440-451.

[26]

Spanoudakis, G. and Zisman, A., Inconsistency management in software engineering: survey and open research issues. In: Chang, S.K. (Ed.), Handbook of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore. pp. 329-380.

[27]

Barragáns-Martínez, B. and Pazos-Arias, J., X-SCTL/MUS: a formal methodology to evolve multi-perspective software requirements specifications. In: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2004). Doctoral Symposium, Edinburg, Scotland, UK. pp. 72-74.

[28]

Hunter, A., Measuring inconsistency in knowledge via quasi-classical models. In: Proceedings of the 18th American National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'2002), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. pp. 68-73.

[29]

Hunter, A., Evaluating significance of inconsistencies. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'03), Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA. pp. 468-473.

[30]

S. Konieczny, J. Lang, P. Marquis, Quantifying information and contradiction in propositional logic through test actions, in: Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'03), 2003, pp. 106-111.

Digital Library

[31]

Hunter, A. and Konieczny, S., Approaches to measuring inconsistent information. In: Inconsistency Tolerance, Springer, Berlin. pp. 191-236.

[32]

M. Sabetzadeh, S.M. Easterbrook, Analysis of inconsistency in graph-based viewpoints: a category-theoretic approach, in: Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, October 2003, pp. 12-21.

[33]

Tsai, J.J.P., Weigert, T. and Jang, H.-C., A hybrid knowledge representation as a basis of requirement specification and specification analysis. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. v18 i12. 1076-1100.

[34]

Gabbay, D. and Hunter, A., Making inconsistency respectable - Part 1: a logical framework for inconsistency in reasoning. In: Jorrand, P., Kelemen, J. (Eds.), Foundations of Artificial Intelligence Research, Springer, Berlin. pp. 19-32.

[35]

Gervasi, V. and Zowghi, D., Reasoning about inconsistencies in natural language requirements. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. v14 i3. 277-330.

[36]

Robinson, W. and Fickas, S., Supporting multi-perspective requirements engineering. In: Proceedings of the First IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering, IEEE Computer Society Press, Silver Spring, MD. pp. 206-215.

[37]

Spanoudakis, G. and Kim, H., Supporting the reconciliation of models of object behaviour, international journal of software and systems modelling. Special Issue on Object Oriented Information Systems. v3 i4. 273-293.

[38]

Heitmeyer, C.L., Jeffords, R.D. and Labaw, B.G., Automated consistency checking of requirements specifications. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. v5 i3. 231-261.

[39]

A. van Lamsweerde, R. Darimont, E. Letier, Managing conflicts in goal-driven requirements engineering, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 24 (11) (1998) 908-926. Special Issue on Inconsistency Management in Software Development.

Digital Library

[40]

Kozlenkov, A. and Zisman, A., Discovering, recording, and handling inconsistencies in software specifications. International Journal of Computer and Information Science. v5 i2. 89-108.

[41]

van Lamsweerde, A. and Willemet, L., Inferring declarative requirements specifications from operational scenarios. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. v24 i12. 1089-1114.

[42]

C. Nentwich, L. Capra, W. Emmerich, A. Finkelstein, Static consistency checking for distributed specifications, in: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2001), Coronado Island, CA, 2001, pp. 115-124.

[43]

Hunter, A., How to act on inconsistent news: ignore, resolve, or reject. Data and Knowledge Engineering. v57 i3. 221-239.

[44]

Zowghi, D. and Gervasi, V., On the interplay between consistency, completeness, and correctness in requirements evolution. Information and Software Technology. v45 i14. 993-1009.

[45]

Hunter, A. and Summerton, R., A knowledge-based approach to merging information. Knowledge-Based Systems. v19. 647-674.

Digital Library

[46]

C. Niskier, T.S.E. Maibaum, D. Schwabe, A look through prisma: towards pluralistic knowledge-based environments for software specification acquisition, in: C. Potts (Ed.), Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Workshop on Software Specification and Design, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 1989, pp. 128-136.

Digital Library

[47]

Zave, P. and Jackson, M., Conjunction as composition. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. v2 i4. 379-411.

[48]

Nuseibeh, B., Kramer, J. and Finkelstein, A., A framework for expressing the relationships between multiple views in requirements specification. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. v20 i10. 760-773.

[49]

W. Robinson, Integrating multiple specifications using domain goals, in: Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design (IWSSD-5), IEEE Computer Society Press, 1989, pp. 219-225.

[50]

Systä, T., Incremental construction of dynamic models for object oriented software systems. Journal of Object Oriented Programming. v13 i5. 18-27.

[51]

Uchitel, S. and Kramer, J., A workbench for synthesising behaviour models from scenarios. In: Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'01), IEEE Computer Society Press, Toronto, Canada. pp. 188-197.

[52]

T. Elrad, R.E. Filman, A. Bader, Aspect-oriented programming: introduction, in: Communications of the ACM, Special Issue on Aspect-Oriented Programming, vol. 44 (10), 2001, pp. 29-32.

[53]

Grundy, J.C., Aspect-oriented requirements engineering for component-based software systems. In: Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, IEEE Computer Society Press, Limerick, Ireland. pp. 84-91.

[54]

Laney, R., Barroca, L., Jackson, M. and Nuseibeh, B., Composing requirements using problem frames. In: Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE'04), IEEE Computer Society Press, Kyoto, Japan. pp. 122-131.

Digital Library

[55]

Easterbrook, S. and Nuseibeh, B., Using viewpoints for inconsistency management. BCS/IEE Software Engineering Journal. v11 i1. 31-43.

[56]

Whittle, J. and Araújo, J., Scenario modeling with aspects. IEE Proceedings - Software. Special Issue on Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design. v151 i4. 157-172.

[57]

Araújo, J., Whittle, J. and Kim, D., Modeling and composing scenario-based requirements with aspects. In: Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE'04), IEEE Computer Society Press, Kyoto, Japan. pp. 58-67.

Digital Library

[58]

Qi, G., Liu, W. and Glass, D., A split-combination method for merging inconsistent possibilistic knowledge bases. In: Dubois, D., Welty, C.A., Williams, M.-A. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR'04), AAAI Press, Whistler, Canada. pp. 348-356.

[59]

G. Qi, W. Liu, D. Glass, Combining individually inconsistent prioritized knowledge bases, in: J.P. Delgrande, T. Schaub, (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR'04), AAAI Press, Whistler, Canada, 2004, pp. 342-349.

[60]

J.L. Chacón, R. Pino-Pérez. Logic-based merging: the infinite case, in: J.P. Delgrande, T. Schaub, (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR'04), AAAI Press, Whistler, Canada, pp. 100-108.

[61]

Konieczny, S. and Pino Pérez, R., Merging information under constraints: a logical framework. Journal of Logic and Computation. v12 i5. 773-808.

[62]

G. Qi, W. Liu, D. Bell, Measuring conflict and agreement between two prioritized belief bases, in: Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'05), 2005, pp. 552-557.

Digital Library

[63]

J. García-Duque, J.J. Pazos-Arias, B. Barragáns-Martínez, An analysis-revision cycle to evolve requirements specifications by using the SCTL-MUS methodology, in: Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE), Essen, Germany, 2002, pp. 282-288.

Cited By

Pacheco CGarcia ICalvo-Manzano JReyes M(2022)Measuring and improving software requirements elicitation in a small-sized software organization: a lightweight implementation of ISO/IEC/IEEE 15939:2017—systems and software engineering—measurement processRequirements Engineering10.1007/s00766-022-00394-428:2(257-281)Online publication date: 19-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00766-022-00394-4
Mu KLiu WJin Z(2012)A Blame-Based Approach to Generating Proposals for Handling Inconsistency in Software RequirementsInternational Journal of Knowledge and Systems Science10.4018/jkss.20120101013:1(1-17)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/jkss.2012010101
Liu JChiang JYang MKlein G(2011)Partnering effects on user-developer conflict and role ambiguity in information system projectsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2011.01.00253:7(722-729)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2011.01.002
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

On the interplay between inconsistency and incompleteness in multi-perspective requirements specifications

Recommendations

Merging Requirements Views with Incompleteness and Inconsistency
ASWEC '05: Proceedings of the 2005 Australian conference on Software Engineering

The purpose of X-SCTL/MUS methodology is to support the collaborative development of software requirements specifications. It is a viewpoint-based approach which separates the descriptions provided by different stakeholders, and concentrates on ...
Handling Inconsistency In Distributed Software Requirements Specifications Based On Prioritized Merging

Developing a desirable framework for handling inconsistencies in software requirements specifications is a challenging problem. It has been widely recognized that the relative priority of requirements can help developers to make some necessary trade-off ...
Handling Inconsistency In Distributed Software Requirements Specifications Based On Prioritized Merging

Developing a desirable framework for handling inconsistencies in software requirements specifications is a challenging problem. It has been widely recognized that the relative priority of requirements can help developers to make some necessary trade-off ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

Copyright © Elsevier B.V. © 2007.

Publisher

Butterworth-Heinemann

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 March 2008

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

5
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 03 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Pacheco CGarcia ICalvo-Manzano JReyes M(2022)Measuring and improving software requirements elicitation in a small-sized software organization: a lightweight implementation of ISO/IEC/IEEE 15939:2017—systems and software engineering—measurement processRequirements Engineering10.1007/s00766-022-00394-428:2(257-281)Online publication date: 19-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00766-022-00394-4
Mu KLiu WJin Z(2012)A Blame-Based Approach to Generating Proposals for Handling Inconsistency in Software RequirementsInternational Journal of Knowledge and Systems Science10.4018/jkss.20120101013:1(1-17)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/jkss.2012010101
Liu JChiang JYang MKlein G(2011)Partnering effects on user-developer conflict and role ambiguity in information system projectsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2011.01.00253:7(722-729)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2011.01.002
Mu KLiu WJin ZBell D(2011)A Syntax-based approach to measuring the degree of inconsistency for belief basesInternational Journal of Approximate Reasoning10.1016/j.ijar.2011.04.00152:7(978-999)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ijar.2011.04.001
Mu KJin Z(2011)An approach to generating proposals for handling inconsistent software requirementsProceedings of the 5th international conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management10.1007/978-3-642-25975-3_4(32-43)Online publication date: 12-Dec-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-25975-3_4

View Options

View options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents