A Pattern-based Approach to Requirements Formalization and Its Supporting Tool

Formalizing requirements in formal specifications usually requires high skills for abstraction and experience in using the formal notation in which the specification is written. This poses a challenge to many practitioners who have to deal with realistic systems within the required schedule and budget. To handle this challenge, this thesis describes a pattern-based approach to facilitate the formalization of requirements. In this approach, a specification pattern system is pre-defined to guide requirements formalization where each pattern provides a specific solution for formalizing one kind of function into a formal specification. All of the patterns are classified and organized into a hierarchical structure according to the functions they can he used to formalize. Based on the pattern system, a method that guides the requirements formalization process by applying the pattern system is described. To facilitate the understanding of the guidance produced by the pattern system and the utilization and maintenance of the pattern knowledge, a method for representing the pattern system is proposed. We also describe a prototype tool that supports the pattern-based approach