A framework for multi-valued reasoning over inconsistent viewpoints

In requirements elicitation, different stakeholders often hold different views of how a proposed system should behave, resulting in inconsistencies between their descriptions. Consensus may not be needed for every detail, but it can be hard to determine whether a particular disagreement affects the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Easterbrook, S., Chechik, M.
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Computer science
Information analysis
Merging
Multivalued logic
Software tools
Vocabulary
Online Access:Request full text
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Description
Summary:In requirements elicitation, different stakeholders often hold different views of how a proposed system should behave, resulting in inconsistencies between their descriptions. Consensus may not be needed for every detail, but it can be hard to determine whether a particular disagreement affects the critical properties of the system. We describe the Xbel framework for merging and reasoning about multiple, inconsistent state machine models. Xbel permits the analyst to choose how to combine information from the multiple viewpoints, where each viewpoint is described using an underlying multi-valued logic. The different values of our logics typically represent different levels of agreement. Our multi-valued model checker, Xchek, allows us to check the merged model against properties expressed in a temporal logic. The resulting framework can be used as an exploration tool to support requirements negotiation, by determining what properties are preserved for various combinations of inconsistent viewpoints.
ISSN:0270-5257
1558-1225
DOI:10.1109/ICSE.2001.919114