Using Problem Frames and projections to analyze requirements for distributed systems

Haley, Charles B.; Laney, Robin C. and Nuseibeh, Bashar (2004). Using Problem Frames and projections to analyze requirements for distributed systems. In: Proceedings of the Tenth International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ'04), co-located with the 16th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'04), 7-8 Jun 2004, Riga, Latvia.

Abstract

Subproblems in a problem frames decomposition frequently make use of projections of the complete problem context. One specific use of projec-tions occurs when an eventual implementation will be distributed, in which case a subproblem must interact with (use) the machine in a projection that represents another subproblem. We refer to subproblems used in this way as services, and propose an extension to projections to represent services as a spe-cial connection domain between subproblems. The extension provides signifi-cant benefits: verification of the symmetry of the interfaces, exposure of the machine-to-machine interactions, and prevention of accidental introduction of shared state. The extension’s usefulness is validated using a case study.