SCORES — Systematic Coupling of Requirements Specifications

Object-oriented requirements specifications comprise the description of behavioral and structural aspects of the system to be built. Use cases for e.g. sketch the system's behavior while the class model expresses its structural properties. The different objectives and modeling techniques of use cases and the class model induce consistency and comprehension problems which are intensified by the different abstraction levels of both techniques. To bridge the gap between use cases and the class model, we refine the UML use case concept by decomposing a use case into well-defined use case steps and complementing it with "control flow" information. Use case steps are specified by preand post-conditions. These assertions take elements of the class model into account which are involved in the steps. For validation purposes, our approach also covers those steps of business processes which are not supported by the system. Granularity and semantics of the resulting model framework SCORES allow for validating the refined use cases and the class model as well as verifying both models against each other. The SCORES tool set provides modeling, validation, and verification facilities including, for example, animated walk-throughs of the refined use cases and bookkeeping of detected errors and anomalies. TABLE OF CONTENTS