A Meta-Model for Representing Software Specification & Design Methods

Abstract

This paper discusses a meta model for representing various software specification & design methods, and a supporting tool for development of specifications by using the multiple methods. This tool is called method base, which has various catalogued methods so that a software designer can select an adequate method for his problem domain by consulting with it. The designer will be navigated throughout his design process, according to the selected method. Subsequently, a method base system can hold the information about the produced documents and about the activities performed in the specification process. It is an essential point how to integrate sub specifications developed by the multiple methods into a final specification. The information about the semantical relationships among the methods is needed. It can be represented by the meta model because it is constructed from the atomic concepts common to the methods, such as object, association, event, state, data, and process. The meta model and the formal representations of the methods can be described in Entity Relationship Diagram. The representations of Object Oriented Analysis (OOA) and Structured Analysis (SA) are presented as the examples. Furthermore we introduce how to construct a specification of an example problem by using three methods, OOA, SA, and State Transition Diagram.