Inconsistency handling in multiperspective specifications

Abstract

Abstruct-The development of most large and complex systems necessarily involves many people+ach with their own perspectives on the system defined by their knowledge, responsibilities, and commitments. To address this we have advocated distributed development of specifications from multiple perspectives. However, this leads to problems of identifying and handling inconsistencies between such perspectives. Maintaining absolute consistency is not always possible. Often this is not even desirable since this can unnecessarily constrain the development process, and can lead to the loss of important information. Indeed since the real-world forces us to work with inconsistencies, we should formalize some of the usually informal or extra-logical ways of responding to them. This is not necessarily done by eradicating inconsistencies but rather by supplying logical rules specifying how we should act on them. To achieve this, we combine two lines of existing research: the Viewpoints framework for perspective development, interaction and organization, and a logic-based approach to inconsistency handling. This paper presents our technique for inconsistency handling in the Viewpoints framework hy using simple examples.Index Terms-Inconsistency handling, multiple perspectives, views,viewpoints, specification, process modeling, classical firstorder predicate logic. temporal logic.

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“…For example in [19], [20], it was checked why so called consistency rules [21] between different diagrams are invalid. This enables to examine why e.g.…”

Mechanisms for Leveraging Models at Runtime in Self-adaptive Software

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Software Design and Architecture The once and future focus of software engineering

“…Separate stakeholders likely require (or at least request) views onto an emerging design which are idiosyncratic to their perspectives. Supporting multiple viewpoints while ensuring consistency among them constitutes a current challenge towards which the community has made progress (e.g., the 4+1 model [50], analyses to discover inconsistencies [26], and an understanding that certain forms of inconsistency must be tolerated [15,28]), but for which much work remains to be done.…”