Mapping Functional Requirements: from Natural Language

Natural language requirements specifications for complex application systems are difficult to analyze and to validate. Consequently, a more formal language for requirements representation is needed that is, for the purpose of validation, understood by endusers (i.e. the requirements owners), as well as by system analysts and developers. Often, the Unified Modeling Language UML is proposed for that purpose. But it is the authors’ experience that especially in non-technical environments UML does not meet the capabilities and interests of end-users so that many development projects still suffer from an incomplete requirements validation. We therefore propose an approach that is based on a more end-user oriented modeling language and that provides mechanisms for both: an automatic transformation of natural language requirements specifications into that modeling language, and after validation, an automatic transformation to UML or other conceptual languages. This paper concentrates on how our approach deals with requirements concerning information system behavior.