Linguistic Patterns and Linguistic Styles for Requirements Specification: Focus on Data Entities
Abstract
Requirements specification includes technical concerns of an information system and is used throughout its life cycle. It allows for sharing the vision of the system among stakeholders and facilitates its development and operation processes. Natural languages are the most common form of requirements representation, however, they also exhibit characteristics that often introduce quality problems, such as inconsistency, incompleteness, and ambiguousness. This paper adopts the notions of linguistic pattern and linguistic style and discusses their relevance to produce better technical documentation. It focuses on the textual specification of data entities, which are elements commonly referred to throughout different types of requirements, like use cases, user stories, or functional requirements. This paper discusses how to textually represent the following elements: data entity, attribute, data type, data entity constraint, attribute constraint, and even cluster of data entities. This pape...r shows concrete examples and supports the discussion with three linguistic styles, represented by a rigorous requirements specification language and two informal controlled natural languages, one with a more compact and another with a more verbose, expressive, and complete representation. We analyzed how other languages cope with the representation of these data entity elements and complemented that analysis and comparison based on the PENS classification scheme. We conducted a pilot evaluation session with nineteen professional subjects who participated and provided encouraging feedback, with positive scores in all the analyzed dimensions. From this feedback, we preliminarily conclude that the adoption of these linguistic patterns would help to produce better requirements specifications written more systematically and consistently.
Keywords:
requirements specification / linguistic style / linguistic pattern / domain model / data entities / controlled natural languageSource:
Applied Sciences-Basel, 2021, 11, 9Publisher:
- MDPI, Basel
Funding / projects:
- FCT [UIDB/50021/2020, 02/SAICT/2017/29360]
- MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/app11094119
ISSN: 2076-3417
WoS: 000649978500001
Scopus: 2-s2.0-85105660685
Collections
Institution/Community
Fakultet organizacionih naukaTY - JOUR AU - da Silva, Alberto Rodrigues AU - Savić, Dušan PY - 2021 UR - https://rfos.fon.bg.ac.rs/handle/123456789/2211 AB - Requirements specification includes technical concerns of an information system and is used throughout its life cycle. It allows for sharing the vision of the system among stakeholders and facilitates its development and operation processes. Natural languages are the most common form of requirements representation, however, they also exhibit characteristics that often introduce quality problems, such as inconsistency, incompleteness, and ambiguousness. This paper adopts the notions of linguistic pattern and linguistic style and discusses their relevance to produce better technical documentation. It focuses on the textual specification of data entities, which are elements commonly referred to throughout different types of requirements, like use cases, user stories, or functional requirements. This paper discusses how to textually represent the following elements: data entity, attribute, data type, data entity constraint, attribute constraint, and even cluster of data entities. This paper shows concrete examples and supports the discussion with three linguistic styles, represented by a rigorous requirements specification language and two informal controlled natural languages, one with a more compact and another with a more verbose, expressive, and complete representation. We analyzed how other languages cope with the representation of these data entity elements and complemented that analysis and comparison based on the PENS classification scheme. We conducted a pilot evaluation session with nineteen professional subjects who participated and provided encouraging feedback, with positive scores in all the analyzed dimensions. From this feedback, we preliminarily conclude that the adoption of these linguistic patterns would help to produce better requirements specifications written more systematically and consistently. PB - MDPI, Basel T2 - Applied Sciences-Basel T1 - Linguistic Patterns and Linguistic Styles for Requirements Specification: Focus on Data Entities IS - 9 VL - 11 DO - 10.3390/app11094119 UR - conv_2491 ER -
@article{ author = "da Silva, Alberto Rodrigues and Savić, Dušan", year = "2021", abstract = "Requirements specification includes technical concerns of an information system and is used throughout its life cycle. It allows for sharing the vision of the system among stakeholders and facilitates its development and operation processes. Natural languages are the most common form of requirements representation, however, they also exhibit characteristics that often introduce quality problems, such as inconsistency, incompleteness, and ambiguousness. This paper adopts the notions of linguistic pattern and linguistic style and discusses their relevance to produce better technical documentation. It focuses on the textual specification of data entities, which are elements commonly referred to throughout different types of requirements, like use cases, user stories, or functional requirements. This paper discusses how to textually represent the following elements: data entity, attribute, data type, data entity constraint, attribute constraint, and even cluster of data entities. This paper shows concrete examples and supports the discussion with three linguistic styles, represented by a rigorous requirements specification language and two informal controlled natural languages, one with a more compact and another with a more verbose, expressive, and complete representation. We analyzed how other languages cope with the representation of these data entity elements and complemented that analysis and comparison based on the PENS classification scheme. We conducted a pilot evaluation session with nineteen professional subjects who participated and provided encouraging feedback, with positive scores in all the analyzed dimensions. From this feedback, we preliminarily conclude that the adoption of these linguistic patterns would help to produce better requirements specifications written more systematically and consistently.", publisher = "MDPI, Basel", journal = "Applied Sciences-Basel", title = "Linguistic Patterns and Linguistic Styles for Requirements Specification: Focus on Data Entities", number = "9", volume = "11", doi = "10.3390/app11094119", url = "conv_2491" }
da Silva, A. R.,& Savić, D.. (2021). Linguistic Patterns and Linguistic Styles for Requirements Specification: Focus on Data Entities. in Applied Sciences-Basel MDPI, Basel., 11(9). https://doi.org/10.3390/app11094119 conv_2491
da Silva AR, Savić D. Linguistic Patterns and Linguistic Styles for Requirements Specification: Focus on Data Entities. in Applied Sciences-Basel. 2021;11(9). doi:10.3390/app11094119 conv_2491 .
da Silva, Alberto Rodrigues, Savić, Dušan, "Linguistic Patterns and Linguistic Styles for Requirements Specification: Focus on Data Entities" in Applied Sciences-Basel, 11, no. 9 (2021), https://doi.org/10.3390/app11094119 ., conv_2491 .