Logical Approach: Consistency Rules between Activity Diagram and Class Diagram

Noraini Sulaiman, Sharifah Sakinah Syed Ahmad, Sabrina Ahmad

Abstract


Requirements engineering (RE) is a fundamental in software development process. Requirements engineering encompasses activities ranging from requirements elicitation and analysis to specification, verification and validation. Poor requirements have been proved to be a major cause of software problems such as cost overruns, delivery delays, failure to meet expectation and degradation. Requirements validation especially models validation has gained quite an interest from a lot of researchers. In recent times, several researchers have expressed a great deal of interest in requirements validation, specifically models validation. The field of research related to consistency checking has undergone a considerable boom from time to time. Numerous methods, approaches and techniques have been recommended to address the requirements inconsistency issues, particularly in models validation. In the software development industry, UML modelling has been extensively used. The different forms of the UML model that characterise the system from various perspectives somehow establish a relation among the models to keep them inseparable from one another. This is the reason why the inconsistency becomes unavoidable. The inconsistency in the models arises when there is an overlap of the elements of the various models representing the different parts of the system and an absence of cooperation. In this paper, the emphasis is given on the consistency rules that exist between the two models. The focus is also on the class diagrams and activity, and the conversion of the rules into logical predicates, where the logical predicates are assessed with a sample case study that constitutes of the two models.

Keywords


requirements engineering; UML modeling; logical approach; consistency rules; activity diagram.

Full Text:

PDF

References


V. Gervasi and D. Zowghi, “Reasoning about inconsistencies in natural language requirements,†ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol., vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 277–330, 2005.

D. Torre, “A systematic identification of consistency rules for UML diagrams,†2015.

H. Eriksson and M. Penker, Business Modeling With UML: Business Patterns at Work. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000.

X. Blanc, I. Mounier, A. Mougenot, and T. Mens, “Detecting model inconsistency through operation-based model construction,†Proc. 13th Int. Conf. Softw. Eng. - ICSE ’08, p. 511, 2008.

D. Zowghi and V. Gervasi, “The Three Cs of Requirements: Consistency, Completeness, and Correctness,†Proc. 8th Int. Work. Require. Eng. Found. Softw. Qual., no. March, pp. 155–164, 2002.

Z. Liang and G. Wu, “Consistency Checking of Multiviews Based on Agent.†IEEE, Hubei, China, 2004.

L. I. U. Hua-xiao, W. Shou-yan, and J. I. N. Ying, “A Tool to Verify the Consistency of Requirements Concern Model,†2013.

M. Kamalrudin, “Automated Software Tool Support for Checking the Inconsistency of Requirements,†2009 IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. Autom. Softw. Eng., pp. 693–697, Nov. 2009.

W. Li, “Toward consistency checking of natural language temporal requirements,†2011 26th IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. Autom. Softw. Eng. (ASE 2011), pp. 651–655, Nov. 2011.

G. Reggio, M. Leotta, F. Ricca, and D. Clerissi, “What are the used UML diagrams? A preliminary survey,†in CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2013, vol. 1078, pp. 3–12.

Y. Shinkawa, “Inter-model consistency in UML based on CPN formalism,†Proc. - Asia-Pacific Softw. Eng. Conf. APSEC, pp. 411–418, 2006.

P. G. Sapna and H. Mohanty, “Ensuring consistency in the relational repository of UML models,†Proc. - 10th Int. Conf. Inf. Technol. ICIT 2007, pp. 217–222, 2007.

D. Kalibatiene, O. Vasilecas, and R. Dubauskaite, “Ensuring Consistency in Different IS Models – UML Case Study,†Balt. J. Mod. Comput., vol. 1, no. 1–2, pp. 63–76, 2013.

D. Torre, “On Collecting and Validating UML Consistency Rules : a Research Proposal,†pp. 1–4, 2014.

J. Chanda, a. Kanjilal, S. Sengupta, and S. Bhattacharya, “Traceability of requirements and consistency verification of UML use case, activity, and Class diagram: A Formal Approach,†2009 Proceeding Int. Conf. Methods Model. Comput. Sci., 2009.

N. Ibrahim, R. Ibrahim, M. Z. Saringat, D. Mansor, and T. Herawan, “Consistency rules between UML use case and activity diagrams using logical approach,†Int. J. Softw. Eng. its Appl., vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 119–134, 2011.

A. H. Khan, Consistency of UML Based Designs Using Ontology Reasoners, no. 168. 2013.

K. Ryndina and M. K. Jochen, “Consistency of Business Process Models and Object Life Cycles.â€

G. Spanoudakis and A. Zisman, “Inconsistency Management in Software Engineering : Survey and Open Research Issues,†Handb. Softw. Eng., pp. 329–380, 2001.

A. Egyed and M. Del Rey, “Scalable Consistency Checking between Diagrams - The VIEWINTEGRA Approach,†pp. 387–390, 2001.

A. Kozlenkov and A. Zisman, “Are their Design Specifications Consistent with our Requirements ?†2002.

A. Ohnishi, “Management and verification of the consistency among UML Models,†no. September 2015.

D. Torre and M. Genero, “UML Consistency Rules : A Systematic Mapping Study,†no. January, pp. 1–28, 2014




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18517/ijaseit.9.1.7581

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.



Published by INSIGHT - Indonesian Society for Knowledge and Human Development