Latest research results have shown that requirements errors have a prolonged impact on software development and that they are more expensive to fix during later stages than early stages in software development. Use case diagrams in UML are used to give requirements for a software system, but all descriptions for each use case are written in informal language. In this paper, we propose a new language HCL (High-Level Constraint Language) to which any requirement model given by use case diagrams can be mapped. Not only is the language HCL based on a formal language but also the requirement model written in HCL can be executed. Many errors occurring during requirements analysis and design can be detected by means of execution.
Wuwei Shen, Mohsen Guizani, Zijiang Yang, Kevin J.