A Conceptual Model for Conformance, Compliance and Consistency.pdfVIP

A Conceptual Model for Conformance, Compliance and Consistency Sebastian Bab and Bernd Mahr Technische Universit?t Berlin, Germany bab@cs.tu-berlin.de, mahr@cs.tu-berlin.de Abstract. Theories of specification are built on assumptions on the processes of development. Theories which allow for specifications from different viewpoints raise the problem of nontrivial concepts of conformance, compliance and consistency. We propose a general conceptual model for these concepts, which applies to situations with multiple specifications prescribing requirements of different nature. 1. Concepts of Development in Theories of Specification Development of distributed and embedded systems implies that one has to deal with multiple viewpoints, different types of requirements and various forms of description. As a consequence, at the level of system specification, there occur situations in which declarations concern different ontologies and requirements have their interpretation in different logics. This linguistic and at the same time conceptual heterogeneity can not remain completely unresolved. Since, by the nature of a development task, the targeted system is being developed as a functional whole, there is the need for unifying concepts of conformance, compliance and consistency. Not only is any judgement on the systems quality depending on such concepts, also from a pragmatic point of view these concepts are indispensable, since diversity of specifications is a major source of inefficiency and failure. It is therefore only natural to ask for specification theories which deal with conformance, compliance and consistency. 2 Sebastian Bab and Bernd Mahr Amazingly there is little systematic study of these concepts, which is independent from the languages and formalisms applied. With the discipline of software engineering different theories of specification have emerged which address the general relationships between requirements, specificatio