A Collaborative Approach to Describe the Domain Language through the Language Extended Lexicon.

Abstract

Software development is a succession of descriptions in different languages in which every description is based on a previous one. Since the requirements specification is one of the first descriptions, it is important to begin software development with requirements that are as correct and as complete as possible. Although some literature holds the belief that correctness and completeness are two attributes that requirements specifications must satisfy, we know that these attributes are very difficult to meet. However, we have to find ways to diminish the level of incompleteness and deal with the possible conflicts that do arise in the requirements context. Defining the domain language before specifying the requirements is a way of coping with these problems. Nowadays, software systems involve many stakeholders and it is hard to engage all of them to produce a domain language specification. We rely on collaboration to foster the involvement and cooperation of the stakeholders, thus they are able to explore the differences constructively and provide a common understanding of the domain language beyond their own limited views. In this paper, we propose a strategy to capture the domain language in a collaborative way using the Language Extended Lexicon and we show a validation of the proposed strategy.

Multidimensional modeling driven from a domain language

“…Blue is another color and blue and red are hyponyms while color is a hypernym. There are approaches to create the LEL collaboratively [13] that can effectively deal with the identification and clarification of the synonyms. Terms (called symbols within the LEL) are defined through two attributes: notion and behavioral responses.…”

“…There are some early reports about three significant characteristics of a LEL: it is easy to learn, it is easy to use, and it has good expressiveness [10]. Besides, a LEL can be used to obtain requirements [11]; thus, it can be considered as a first step in requirements elicitation.…”

“…This makes our approach applicable even when end-users have no knowledge of the multidimensional model. Besides, there is a proposal to create the LEL in a collaborative way [13], hence our approach can cope with collaborative settings. This is important because multidimensional schemata are usually of interest to different business units inside an organization, and it is almost impossible to find one single expert who has detailed knowledge of the whole organization.…”

Conflict Management in the Collaborative Description of a Domain Language (S)

“…Antonelli [7] outlines a strategy to describe the LEL in a collaborative way. However, it is very difficult to produce a domain language specification when there are many actors involved [8].…”

Proceso de requisitos validado empíricamente

“…Éstas han surgido de la experiencia en el uso del LEL. Existe otra definición de los patrones sintácticos que se mantiene muy cercana a la original, la cual está orientada a construir un LEL colaborativo [Antonelli16].…”