SSP Group Meeting

11am, 4 May, 2004
Room 4.03, Appleton Tower
CISA, School of Informatics
University of Edinburgh

A Formal Approach to Basic Property Tests In Requirements Engineering and Modelling

Chris Lin

A model, to fulfil a given purpose, is constructed by choosing a representation paradigm in accordance to its fitness for that purpose. Some properties of the model are intended to be consistent with the requirements and these are used to keep the model accurate and relevant, especially when the model evolves through modification. This implies that some properties are preserved when models are combined or modified. Explicitly or implicitly, such properties are imposed on a model when first constructed and are expected to be consistent through out its lifecycle. Therefore, identifying and validating them is an important issue in requirements engineering and in modelling.This talk aims to introduce an investigation of this issue from the viewpoint of a logical analysis, to provide a formal description and some automation to assist in the validation of this type of requirement. Three features of this problem are examined. On the theoretical side, we describe a way of checking consistency of a class of properties. This involves the identification of information about each property, the proof of a consistency property and the possible assumptions required for its establishment. On the application side, we give an automatic way of performing a limited form of validation of consistency when within a modelling lifecycle. This involves identifying the bridging mechanism and the necessary information provided manually as the premise for the validation of the derived model. On the practical engineering side, we show how this can be embedded into a component based synthesis process.