Reusing Domain Knowledge in Requirement Analysis

This paper addresses the systematic reuse of domain specific information in the early phases of the information system life cycle, i.e., requirement analysis and, in part, conceptual design. In this context, compared to the usual approaches that concentrate on reusing software (documents) on the more technical levels, reuse receives a new facet: the enduser in his role of the requirements provider. He has to decide on what information is to be changed, reused (i.e., valid) or rejected. In order to be able to do so, he must be provided with the informations in question in a way that allows him a quick understanding and that sets him into a position to easily cope with the complexity that is inherent to descriptions of real application domains. For that purpose, an additional phase, called conceptual predesign, is introduced into the information system life cycle between requirement analysis and conceptual design. It comes with a glossary model, the vocabulary of which demands less abstraction abilities than semantic models as they are known from methods for conceptual design, resp. object-oriented analysis. It will be shown, how information reuse might be done and supported within such a framework.