Computer-assisted transformation of design documents from a natural language description to structured modeling languages

In the present thesis, a novel approach is proposed to transform design documents described by a natural language into a structured modeling languages, particularly UML diagrams and FBS models. The transformation consists of two steps: (i) From natural language to an intermediate graphic language called Recursive Object Model (ROM). (ii) From a ROM diagram to a modeling language. The ROM diagram corresponding to a text includes the main semantic information implied in the text by modeling the relations between the words in a text. Based on the semantics implied in the ROM diagram, a set of criteria is proposed to mine the semantic meaning of the original text corresponding to the ROM diagram. Once the semantic meaning of the design documents through their corresponding ROM diagram is captured, a set of mapping rules from the ROM diagram criteria to the modeling language elements is proposed. After that, a set of generation rules to explore the relationship between these elements is proposed to generate UML diagrams and FBS models based on a ROM diagram. A software prototype R2U is presented as a proof of concept for transforming ROM diagrams to UML diagrams. Another software prototype R2FBS is also presented as a proof of concept for transforming ROM diagrams to FBS models. Several case studies show that the proposed approach is feasible. The proposed approach can be applied to requirements modeling in various engineering fields such as software engineering, automotive engineering, and aerospace engineering. Future work is indicated at the end of the present thesi