VALIDATING REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATIONS STATED IN KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION LANGUAGE TEMPLAR

Abstract

Techniques for analysis and validation of software requirements specifications written in the knowledge representation language Templar are presented. Templar specifications are analyzed in terms of ambiguity, non-minimality, contradiction, incompleteness, and redundancy. Since Templar is a powerful knowledge representation language supporting a rich set of modeling primitives, it is difficult to reason directly on Templar specifications. To solve this problem, Templar specifications are mapped into equivalent temporal logic programs which are analyzed in terms the criteria listed above. However, it is hard to reason about Templar specifications because some of the criteria cannot be formally proven, and the verification of other criteria constitute undecidable or intractable problems. To overcome these difficulties, we consider a set of tractable conditions for each criteria, which serve as "alarms" for the user. If a condition is violated then it means that the specification either definitely has or potentially can have a problem. Furthermore, the user is notified about the source and the nature of the problem in certain cases.