Comments on: Could requirements analysis be automated?

By: Rey

Rey — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 02:15:36 +0000

Hi JB,

I think my post replies were lost from here. I posted them sometime yesterday and the other days. In fact you replied one of those.

Rey

By: Rey Giganto

Rey Giganto — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 04:43:19 +0000

Thanks Jonathan for the comments. I am halfway through of my study. The concepts are briefly summarized at my itwebse http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~rtg4/index.htm

My study focuses on object identification from requirements specs but along the way I’ve realized that my process could lead to automatically generating running codes (though not 100% of them). I’m thinking to extend my study to develop methodologies to automatically generate codes just in the case of Metafor (http://larifari.org/writing/IUI2005-Metafor.pdf)

I visited Ravenflow,USA maker of RAVEN (Requirements Authoring and Validation Environment) last year for a research study on this automated requirements definition tool. You might want to investigate at http://www.ravenflow.com

I’ve always asked: If requirements analysis could be automated, why not complete the automation task, that is automated the coding part too?

By: JB

JB — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:49:03 +0000

That’s fascinating, Rey. I’d certainly be interested in hearing more about your research and the available tools.

By: Rey Giganto

Rey Giganto — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 04:30:08 +0000

There are a number of automated requirements analysis existing nowadays but their use in the industry is still unfamiliar. I have surveyed these tools and found them very promising. I am presently finishing my PhD research on automatic object identification during requirements analysis, so, I firmly believe the this automation is really possible.

By: Rey

Rey — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 04:21:42 +0000

Yes I believe that automated requirements elicitation is possible. It is my PhD topic at the moment.

By: JB

JB — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:37:30 +0000

Doug, I think it’s an interesting topic of discussion, too. I may try to get Mark to share some more of his ideas on requirements automation some time in the near future.

By: DougGtheBA

DougGtheBA — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:26:26 +0000

Well never say never, huh? I can see portions of your theory becoming a reality, with emphasis on the business rules portions. In fact we’re currently starting to utilize iLog to implement a rules database that allows users to change the rules on-the-fly without the need to alter the code. This provides great flexibility for users to implement changes.

While there are project components that can be replicated from iteration to iteration, I can’t think of two projects in general that have so much commonality that something like this would work.

I am interested to see what IDIOM is and what else is out there in this realm. Are there any discussions/studies in something like AI that could lend themselves to programming analyst logic?

By: JB

JB — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:07:00 +0000

Interesting stuff, Mark. I’ll take a look at your paper, there.

By: Mark Norton

Mark Norton — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:59:23 +0000

Idiom promotes a variation on your theme, using decisioning as the basis and driver of requirements analysis [http://www.idiomsoftware.com/pdfs/IDIOM%20Decisioning.pdf]

We will be making the Idiom Decision Manager available for free public access this quarter.

We have also built it into a full workbench that we use in collaboration with
partners – product collateral is currently being written up.

The one point I would like to make is that when you can get an automated requirements statement, then you can test it for completeness, consistency, and correctness – after which you can generate the system components that implement it.

The Idiom Decision Manager produces PDF (English), XML, C#, and Java versions all from the same ‘requirements spec’.

By: David Wright

David Wright — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:22:27 +0000

RT @jonbab1: Blog post: Could requirements analysis be automated? http://cli.gs/bb7R1 What do you think?