A systematic review of transformation approaches between user requirements and analysis models

Abstract

Model transformation is one of the basic principles of Model Driven Architecture. To build a software system, a sequence of transformations is performed, starting from requirements and ending with implementation. However, requirements are mostly in the form of text, but not a model that can be easily understood by computers; therefore, automated transformations from requirements to analysis models are not easy to achieve. The overall objective of this systematic review is to examine existing literature works that transform textual requirements into analysis models, highlight open issues, and provide suggestions on potential directions of future research. The systematic review led to the analysis of 20 primary studies (16 approaches) obtained after a carefully designed procedure for selecting papers published in journals and conferences from 1996 to 2008 and Software Engineering textbooks. A conceptual framework is designed to provide common concepts and terminology and to define a unified transformation process. This facilitates the comparison and evaluation of the reviewed papers.One of the basic principles of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) [29] is model transformation. To build a software system, a series of transformations is performed: transformation from requirements to Platform Independent Model (PIM) (the analysis model), transformation from PIM to Platform Specific Model (PSM) (the design model), and transformation from PSM to code. However, the transformation from requirements to an analysis model is not part of the MDA lifecycle, which starts from an analysis model and ends with deployed code [29]. The reason of this exclusion is perhaps that requirements are mostly in a textual form, which is not a model formal enough to be understood by computers. As a result, requirements are not suitable for automated transformations, and only manual heuristics, such as Abbott's heuristics [4], are in general followed [9,32]. However, if a (semi-) automated transformation technology from requirements to an analysis model were devised, it would help fill an important gap in the MDA software development lifecycle.If these transformations can be automated, full traceability from requirements (through PIM and PSM) to the ultimate software code can be obtained at the same time. Traceability is the ability to link requirements to corresponding analysis and design models, code, test cases, and other software artifacts. Traceability is important during software development because it enables engineers to understand the connections between various artifacts of a software system, and it is also used to determine whether

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