Process Deliverable Diagram for Requirement Elicitation based on Rule-Based
Baseline Ontology Extraction
Based on research paper: A Domain Ontology Building Process for Guiding Requirements Elicitation (2010)
By Inah Omoronyia1, Guttorm Sindre1, Tor Stålhane1, Stefan Biffl2, Thomas Moser2, and Wikan Sunindyo2
1 Department
2 Institute
of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria
Assignment Week 8-9-10
Bernadette Budhawara
0335924
INFOME-2013
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Introduction
The method presented in the paper is focus on requirement elicitation which is one main activity of
requirement engineering (Kaiya & Saeki, 2006). The following Process Deliverable Diagram (PDD) –
Figure 1 - depict the requirement engineering process as describe by Kotoya & Sommerville (1998) in
general before we explore deeper in requirement elicitation process.
REQUIREMENT DOCUMENT
REQUIREMENT
ENGINEERING
1
1
Elicit Requirement
REQUIREMENT
1
Analyze Requirements
Negotiate Requirements
ANALYSIS
NEGOTIATION RESULTS
1..*
1..*
Document Requirements
DOCUMENTATION
1..*
Validate Requirements
VALIDATION
1..*
Manage Requirements
ACTION LIST FOR REQUIREMENT MANAGEMENT
Figure 1
Requirements elicitation is one activity that has objective to facilitate the requirements analyst in order to
understand the business process within the application domain, generate list of activities within the process
and discovers restrictions, regulation, and boundaries (Kaiya & Saeki, 2006).
The method describe here is Rule-based ontology for requirements elicitation. It provides some
possibilities for capturing the initial or baseline concepts-relations and map it to a specific domain ontology
based on some existing texts. Detail PDD of rule-based ontology method depicted in Figure 2.
The activities consist of (1) Prepare the text documents manually by removing symbols and/ or edit the text
format; (2) Trail brackets; automatically map brackets or dashes and change it into punctuation marks and
generate supplementary texts. For example in the given sentence: ‘the notification should be possible to be
saved as document file types (excel, pdf or docx )’. Bracket trailing will extract the “excel”, “pdf”, and
“docx” and related with the concept “file-types”; (3) Complete bridged-term; locate and correcting bridgeterm in the text. Given the phrase “inhale and exhale respiration methods”, with bridged-term completion it
should suggest the combine terms “inhale respiration methods” and “exhale respiration methods” as
concepts than just “inhale”; (4) Extract SPO (subject-predicate-object); automatically identify subjects,
predicates and objects, continue with categorize them as concepts and relations between concepts; (5)
Mine association; automatically identifies head and link it to the origin subjects/ objects from the previous
step; and (6) Cluster the (finding) concepts-relations. The output will be used by requirement analyst or
product manager to start the requirements analysis and negotiation phase.
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Rule-Based Baseline Ontology
for Req. Elicitation
REQUIREMENT DOCUMENT
1
Preparation
Locate Symbol/ Special Characters
SYMBOL/ SPECIAL CHARACTER LIST
0..*
[identify]
[else]
Edit Symbol/ Special Characters
Resume Preparation
1..*
PREPARED REQUIREMENT
Requirement analyst
0..1
EXTRACTION
1
Trail-Brackets
Locate Brackets/ Dashes
BRACKET/ DASH
[identify]
0..*
Remove Predefine Reference
Pointers
[else]
Extract Subjects/ Objects
SUBJECT/ OBJECT (SO)
Link Subjects/ Objects to Head
Concept
SO – HEAD CONCEPT
Resume Requirements Statements
1..*
1..*
1..*
REQUIREMENT AFTER TRAIL-BRACKETS
Automated
Complete
Bridge-term
Locate Bridge-term
BRIDGE-TERM
Automated
1
1
[identify]
Analyze Bridge-term pattern
[else]
Correct Bridge-term
CORRECTION
Tag Correction
TAG
Automated
Automated
Control Text Construction
has
0..*
0..*
RECONSTRUCTED REQUIREMENT
Domain analyst
Expert
Requirement
Extract SPO
0..*
BRIDGE-TERM PATTERN
Automated
Locate Subject-Predicate-Object
(SPO)
1..*
1..*
SUBJECT-PREDICATE-OBJECT
1
[identify]
Control SPO existence
1..*
SPO LIST
[else]
[existed]
[else]
Define Concept
CONCEPT
Define Relation
RELATION
Resume text after SPO extraction
1..*
1..*
1..*
SPO EXTRACTION
Automated
Mine
association
1
[identify]
Link head with Subject/Object
[else]
Extract prepositional phrase
(PP) Relation
Automated
Cluster
Concepts
0..*
HEAD CONCEPT
Locate association head concept
HEAD – SUBJECT/ OBJECT
PP RELATION
1..*
1..*
CLUSTER CONCEPT
1..*
1
Match lexical similarity
LEXICAL SIMILARITY
Generate Taxonomy Tree
TAXONOMY TREE
Resume Clusters
CLUSTERED
0..*
1..*
1..*
Automated
ELICITED REQUIREMENT
Elicit Requirements
1..*
Figure 2
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The following are the activity and concept tables.
Activity Table
Activity
Sub Activity
Description
Preparation
Locate Symbol/ Special Characters
It is necessary to prepare the requirement
statements before it processes automatically by the
method.
The first step is locate any symbol or special
character in the statements
When a symbol/ special characters identified it will
be edited or removed by Requirement analyst
Resume the preparation activities after no more
symbol or special characters discovered
The step continue with locating any brackets within
the statement
When brackets discover then the predefine
reference pointer is removed
The subject or object between brackets extracted
Edit Symbol/ Special Characters
Resume Preparation
Trail-Brackets
Locate Brackets/ Dashes
Remove Predefine Reference Pointer
Extract Subjects/ Objects
Link Subjects/ Object to Head Concept
Resume Requirement Statements
Complete BridgeTerm
Locate Bridge-term
Analyze Bridge-term pattern
Correct Bridge-term
Tag Correction
Control Text Construction
Extract SPO
Define Concept
Manually, the requirement analyst control the
requirement statement after construction
Locate the subject-predicate-object (SPO) in the
given statement
Control if the same SPO already identified as
concept or relation
Extract the finding subject-object into relation
Define Relation
Extract the finding predicates into relation
Resume text after SPO extraction
Resume the requirement statement after SPO
extraction
Locate the association between relation and the
concept
When association identified found, link the head
with the subject -object located in the previous step
Extract any prepositional phrase (PP) and define it
as potential relation
In the cluster concept, the method automatically
clustering the concept based on the lexical
similarity to avoid repetitive concept & relation
The activity continue with generating a taxonomy
tree to map the concept and relation
Conclude clustering concepts
Locate Subject-Predicate-Object (SPO)
Control SPO existence
Mine Association
Locate association head concept
Link Head with Subject/ Object
Extract prepositional phrase (PP) relation
Cluster Concept
Match Lexical similarity
Generate Taxonomy Tree
Resume Clusters
Elicit
Requirements
Generate link between the subject or object with
the head concept before the bracket
Resume the requirement statement after brackets
removal
Locate bridge-term within the requirement
statement
Analyzing the pattern based on NLP method as
described by Omoronyia et al. (2010).
Correct the identified bridge term based on NLP
method
Create tag in the correction location
Resume the result of the requirement elicitation
process
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Concept Table
Concept
Description
REQUIREMENT DOCUMENT
BRACKET/ DASH
A document contains detail requirement statement. This applies to any
type of domain knowledge. The example given in Omoronyia et al.
(2010) assess requirement statement for Automatic Cruise Control
which relate to mechanical engineering - while the example I provided
in the previous assignment is an IS requirement statement.
A list of symbol and/ or special character discovered in the requirement
statement.
A soft-copy document contains requirement statement, that no longer
contain any symbol/ special character.
A document contains texts extraction gathered during brackets-trailing
activities.
A list of text in the bracket or dash.
SUBJECT/ OBJECTS (SO)
A subject and object identified in the requirement.
SO – HEAD CONCEPT
A list of relation between subject-object (SO) with the head concept of
the text in the requirements statement.
A resumed requirement statement after all the brackets trailed.
SYMBOL/ SPECIAL CHARACTER LIST
PREPARED REQUIREMENT
EXTRACTION
REQUIREMENT AFTER TRAILBRACKETS
BRIDGE-TERM
A list of bridge-term in the requirement statement.
BRIDGE-TERM PATTERN
An identified pattern of the bridge-term in the requirement statement.
CORRECTION
A list of correction made in the text after bridge-term analyze and
identify.
A list of tag link to the correction that made for each bridge-term.
TAG
RECONSTRUCTED REQUIREMENT
SUBJECT-PREDICATE-OBJECT
SPO LIST
CONCEPT
RELATION
SPO EXTRACTION
HEAD CONCEPT
HEAD – SUBJECT/ OBJECT
PP RELATION
CLUSTER CONCEPT
LEXICAL SIMILARITY
A document contains a reconstructed requirement statement after
bridge-term removed and already controlled by requirement analyst to
avoid any ambiguity terms Omoronyia et al. (2010).
A document contains subject-predicate-object (SPO) of the requirement
based on results of extraction of SPO, concept and relation.
A list of SPO identified in the text.
A list of define concept based on the SPO extracted from the
requirement statement.
A list of define relation based on the SPO extracted from the
requirement statement.
A document resumed as the complete subject-predicate-object
extraction.
A list of concept link with the head of subject-object identified in
association mining activity. It derives from the generated subject-object
during the extraction.
A list of link between subject and head (as domain) and it's relation that
derived from the extracted predicates Omoronyia et al. (2010).
A list of prepositional phrase (PP) relation. PP consists of a preposition
and an object of preposition. The potential subject-object defines as
object in PP. PP used to define temporal or spatial relationship between
subject-object. Based on NLP method any subject-object sentences
without PP by default are head-subject/ object Omoronyia et al. (2010)
& Liddy (2001).
A list of concepts and relations clusters, extracted from the preceding
activities (SPO analysis and association mining)
A list of lexical similarity in the concept-relation. It is necessary to
match lexical similarity in order to remove any repetitive concept and
relation Omoronyia et al. (2010).
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TAXONOMY TREE
CLUSTERED
ELICITED REQUIREMENT
A list of taxonomy tree. It based on similarity between terms used to
describe different concept.
A list of the resumed clustered concept after the completion of subactivities matching lexical similarity and generated taxonomy tree.
A document as deliverable of the requirement elicitation with rulebased baseline ontology method. It is a part of the requirement
document.
References
Kaiya, H. & Saeki, M., (2006). Using Domain Ontology as Domain Knowledge for Requirements
Elicitation. Requirements Engineering, 14th IEEE International Conference, (pp. 189-198).
Kotonya, G. & Sommerville, I., (1998). Requirement Enginnering. John Wiley & Sons.
Liddy, E.D. (2001). Natural Language Processing. Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 2nd
edn. Marcel Decker, Inc., New York, USA.
Omoronyia, I., Sindre, G., Stålhane, T., Biffl, S., Moser, T., & Sunindyo, W. (2010). A Domain Ontology
Building Process for Guiding Requirements Elicitation. In R. Wieringa and A. Persson (Eds.): REFSQ
2010, LNCS 6182, (pp.188–202).Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
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