Repository support for multi-perspective requirements engineering

Hans W. Nissen, Matthias Jarke
1999 Information Systems  
| Relationships among di erent modeling perspectives have been systematically investigated focusing either on given notations e.g. UML or on domain reference models e.g. ARIS SAP. In contrast, many successful informal methods for business analysis and requirements engineering e.g. JAD emphasize team negotiation, goal orientation and exibility of modeling notations. This paper addresses the question how m uch formal and computerized support can be provided in such settings without destroying
more » ... r creative tenor. Our solution is based on a novel modeling language design, M-Telos, that integrates the adaptability and analysis advantages of the logic-based meta modeling language Telos with a module concept covering the structuring mechanisms of scalable software architectures. It comprises four components: 1 A modular conceptual modeling formalism organizes individual perspectives and their interrelationships. 2 Perspective s c hemata are linked to a conceptual meta meta model of shared domain terms, thus giving the architecture a semantic meaning and enabling adaptability and extensibility of the network of perspectives. 3 Inconsistency management across perspectives is handled in a goal-oriented manner, by formalizing analysis goals as meta rules which are automatically customized to perspective s c hemata. 4 Continuous incremental maintenance of inconsistency information is provided by exploiting recent view maintenance techniques from deductive databases. The approach has been fully implemented as an extension to the ConceptBase meta database management system and is currently experimentally applied in the context of business analysis and data warehouse design.
doi:10.1016/s0306-4379(99)00009-5 fatcat:x77q7t2x5vht5ljdpbzxvm2uqi