The identification of integrity constraints in requirements for context monitoring

Abstract

The rapid advancement of technology has created the demand for more complex systems that require deep and diverse application-specific knowledge. Building such systems requires expertise in domain-specific knowledge that could include areas such as flight control, navigation and sensor processing, expertise in software-related knowledge in areas such as operating systems, human/computer interface, object-oriented technology and distributed systems, and an understanding of relevant social factors. This exacerbates a long-standing problem in software engineering: communicating specialized knowledge to members of the development team who have varied levels of expertise. This concern is being addressed through an approach called context monitoring-the use of integrity constraints to capture the conditions that data manipulated by the program must satisfy, and the dynamic monitoring of the enforcement of them by the program. The work reported in this paper is laying the initial groundwork for the identification of integrity constraints that is critical for the effectiveness of this approach. This paper provides an overview of the context monitoring effort and presents an initial methodology for eliciting constraints from the appropriate stakeholders during the requirements phase.