Knowledge-Based Requirements Engineering in Detecting Ambiguity

  • Authors

    • Jacline Sudah Sinpang
    • Shahida Sulaiman
    • Norsham Idris
    2018-12-03
    https://doi.org/10.14419/ijet.v7i4.38.27889
  • Requirements engineering, Knowledge-based requirements engineering, Requirements ambiguity, Requirements vagueness.

  • Abstract

    Requirements engineering is a phase where the elicitation and analysis of requirements are crucial. Low quality requirements could cost a software project to experience failure, as it does not meet users’ needs. One of the causes of poor quality requirements is ambiguity. Software engineers or more specifically system analysts normally gather requirements in natural language where it is easy for both developer and stakeholders to understand each other. However, natural language in requirements gathering is prone to ambiguity. Ambiguous requirements will cause developers to understand differently from what the stakeholders actually require. Thus, it is important to avoid ambiguous requirements. As there are many types of ambiguity, this study focuses on the vagueness of functional requirements. The study implements rule-based reasoning in knowledge-based requirements engineering to detect vagueness. Rules for the proposed prototype tool are obtained from journals and experts in requirements engineering. The evaluation shows that diverse categories of vagueness can be detected earlier using the proposed technique and its tool.

     

     

  • References

    1. [1] Nguyen, T. H., Vo, B. Q., Lumpe, M., Grundy, J,. “REInDetector: a framework for knowledge-based requirements engineering,†In Proceedings of the 27th IEEE/ACM international conference on automated software engineering (pp. 386-389). ACM, September 2012.

      [2] Aoyama, M., & Saito, S., “Requirements Engineering Based on REBOK (Requirements Engineering Body Of Knowledge) and Its Practical Guide,†In Software Engineering Conference (APSEC), 2012 19th Asia-Pacific (Vol. 2, pp. 146-147), IEEE, December 2012.

      [3] Sommerville, I., “Software Engineering. (9th ed.),†Addison-Wesley: Pearson, 2011.

      [4] Umber, A., Bajwa, I. S., “Minimizing ambiguity in natural language software requirements specification,†In Digital Information Management (ICDIM), 2011 Sixth International Conference on (pp. 102-107). IEEE, September 2011.

      [5] Arora, C., Sabetzadeh, M., Briand, L., Zimmer, F., “Automated checking of conformance to requirements templates using natural language processing,†IEEE transactions on Software Engineering, 41(10), 944-968, 2015.

      [6] Fatwanto, A.. “Software requirements specification analysis using natural language processing technique,†In QiR (Quality in Research), 2013 International Conference on (pp. 105-110). IEEE, June 2013.

      [7] Liu, L., Li, T., Kou, X., “Eliciting relations from natural language requirements documents based on linguistic and statistical analysis,†In Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), 2014 IEEE 38th Annual (pp. 191-200). IEEE, July 2014.

      [8] Chantree, F., Nuseibeh, B., De Roeck, A., Willis, A., “Identifying nocuous ambiguities in natural language requirements,†In Requirements Engineering, 14th IEEE International Conference (pp. 59-68). IEEE, 2006.

      [9] Boyd, S., Zowghi, D., Farroukh, A., “Measuring the expressiveness of a constrained natural language: An empirical study,†In Requirements Engineering, 2005. Proceedings. 13th IEEE International Conference on (pp. 339-349). IEEE, 2005.

      [10] IEEE ISO, 8402:1995. Quality Management and Quality Assurance.

      [11] Hopgood, A. A., “Intelligent systems for engineers and scientists,†Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2012.

      [12] Gleich, B., Creighton, O., Kof, L., “Ambiguity detection: Towards a tool explaining ambiguity sources,†Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality, 218-232, 2010.

      [13] Odisho, R., Xu, W., Bronlund, J., Peyron, M. A., “Knowledge-based system for autonomous control of intelligent mastication robots,†In Industrial Electronics (ISIE), 2017 IEEE 26th International Symposium on (pp. 1105-1110). IEEE, 2017.

      [14] Bassiliades, N., Vuvhavas, I., “Active knowledge based system,†in Knowledge based system, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-36,

      [15] Cauvin, S. R., Sleeman, D., Vasconcelos, W. W., “Towards knowledge-intensive software engineering,†In Software Technologies (ICSOFT), 2015 10th International Joint Conference on (Vol. 1, pp. 1-8). IEEE, 2015.

      [16] Abke, J., Gold, C., Kälberer, N., Kuhn, M., “Collaborative knowledge transfer via Wiki: A project based learning approach in software engineering,†In Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL), 2014 International Conference on (pp. 283-288). IEEE, 2014.

      [17] Batanov, D., “Knowledge-Based Support for Software Engineering,†In IFIP International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations (pp. 219-229). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010.

      [18] Kirikova, M., Grundspenkis, J., “Using Knowledge Distribution in Requirements Engineering-6,†2000.

      [19] Ying-ying, Y., Zong-yong, L., Zhi-xue, W, “Domain knowledge consistency checking for ontology-based requirement engineering,†In Computer Science and Software Engineering, 2008 International Conference on (Vol. 2, pp. 302-305). IEEE, 2008.

      [20] Prasetyo, N. A., Bandung, Y., “A design of software requirement engineering framework based on knowledge management and Service-Oriented Architecture Decision (SOAD) modeling framework,†In Information Technology Systems and Innovation (ICITSI), 2015 International Conference on (pp. 1-6). IEEE, 2015.

      [21] Runde, S., Fay, A., & Wutzke, W. O., “Knowledge-based Requirement-Engineering of building automation systems by means of Semantic Web technologies,†In Industrial Informatics, 2009. INDIN 2009. 7th IEEE International Conference on (pp. 267-272). IEEE, 2009.

      [22] Yang, J. D., Lee-Kwang, H., “Treating Uncertain Knowledge-Based Databases-11,†2000.

      [23] Jeffrey, D. U., “Principles of database and knowledge-base systemsâ€, 1989.

      [24] Firesmith, D., “Specifying good requirements,†Journal of Object Technology, 2(4), 77-87, 2003.

      [25] Lim, S. L., “Social Networks and Collaborative Filtering for Large-Scale Requirements Elicitation,†Doctoral dissertation, University of New South Wales, 2010.

  • Downloads

  • How to Cite

    Sudah Sinpang, J., Sulaiman, S., & Idris, N. (2018). Knowledge-Based Requirements Engineering in Detecting Ambiguity. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7(4.38), 1416-1419. https://doi.org/10.14419/ijet.v7i4.38.27889

    Received date: 2019-02-24

    Accepted date: 2019-02-24

    Published date: 2018-12-03