Managing Inconsistency in Software Engineering

An EPSRC Funded Research Project at the Department of Computing at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London



Contents:
  • Overview

  • Aims

  • People

  • Publications

  • Related Websites

  • Progress
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    Overview

    The development of software systems inevitably involves the management of inconsistencies which may arise in the different stages of development. A large proportion of software engineering research has been devoted to consistency maintenance, or has been geared towards eradicating inconsistencies as soon as they are detected. Industrial reality however suggests that practitioners (and their customers) live with inconsistency on a regular basis and develop ways of dealing with it as a matter of course.

    The project aims to investigate the issues of managing inconsistencies that arise during software development activities, in order to provide development tools that are more in tune with actual development practices. In particular, the focus of the project is on examining and developing approaches that tolerate, even make use of, inconsistency in software descriptions (e.g., specifications and programs), and that facilitate reasoning, analysis and action in the presence of inconsistency.

    Aims

    The objectives of this research project are as follows:

  • To develop a conceptual framework for managing inconsistency in software development, which provides guidelines for classifying different kinds of inconsistency, and provides placeholders for different strategies for handling inconsistent descriptions (that in turn provide context-dependent guidance for acting in the presence of inconsistency).

  • To investigate techniques for analysing inconsistent descriptions (requirements specifications in particular) which can be used to identify likely sources/causes of inconsistencies, track/monitor their consequences, prioritise them within the context of particular problem domains, and finally act in an informed manner in order to make progress in the development process.

  • To design and construct tractable automated tool support to guide the human-centred activities of inconsistency management.

  • To demonstrate the usability of the above by developing one or more case studies of software requirements specification drawn from the proposer's current industrial collaborators Philips Research Labs (Redhill), Texas Instruments (Sunbury) and NASA Independent Validation & Verification Facility (West Virginia, USA).

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    People

     Dr. Bashar Nuseibeh is the principal investigator of this project, Dr. Alessandra Russo is employed on the project as a full time research associate.

    Discussion and correspondence about the work on this project is very welcome. Please contact Bashar Nuseibeh, Alessandra Russo.

    Publications
  • Bashar Nuseibeh and Alessandra Russo. Using Abduction to Evolve Inconsistent Requirements Specifications Austrialian Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 7 No. 1, Special Issue on "Requirements Engineering", ISSN: 1039-7841, 1999.
    [Abstract] and [pdf version]
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  • Tim Menzies, Steve Easterbrook, Bashar Nuseibeh and S. Waugh, An Empirical Investigation of Multiple Viewpoint Reasoning in Requirements Engineering, Proceedings of 4th IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, Limerick, Ireland, 7-11 June 1999.
    [Abstract] and [pdf version]
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  • Bashar Nuseibeh and Alessandra Russo, Using Abduction to Evolve Inconsistent Requirements Specifications (Position Paper), Proceedings of ICSE-99 Workshop on Software Change and Evolution (SCE'99), LA, California, USA, 17th May 1999.
    [Abstract] and [pdf version]
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  • Alessandra Russo, Bashar Nuseibeh and Jeff Kramer, Restructuring Requirements Specifications, IEE Proceedings Software,Vol. 146, No. 1, February 1999.
    [Abstract] and [pdf version]
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  • Dov Gabbay, Odinaldo Rodrigues and Alessandra Russo, Revision by Translation, in Information, Uncertainty and Fusion, B. Bouchon-Meunier, R.R. Yager and L.A. Zadeh editors, Kluwer Scientific Publishers (to appear 1999). (A short version will appear in a book in Honour of Johan van Benthem).
    [Abstract] and [pdf version]
  • Anthony Hunter and Bashar Nuseibeh, Managing Inconsistent Specifications: Reasoning, Analysis and Action, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, October 1998.
    [Abstract] and [compressed postscript version]
  • Alessandra Russo, Bashar Nuseibeh, and Jeff Kramer, Restructuring Requirements Specifications for Managing Inconsistency and Change: A Case Study, Proceedings of 3rd IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (ICRE '98), pp51-61, Colorado Springs, USA, 6-10th April 1998.
    [Abstract] and [compressed postscript version]
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  • Bashar Nuseibeh, and Alessandra Russo, On the Consequences of Acting in the Presence of Inconsistency, Department of Computing, Imperial College, November 1997
    (a shorter version appeared in Proceedings of 9th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design (IWSSD-9), pp.156-158, Ise-Shima, Japan, 16-18th April 1998).
    [Abstract] and [compressed postscript version]
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  • Anthony Hunter and Bashar Nuseibeh, Analysing Inconsistent Specifications, Proceedings of 3rd International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, 78-86, Annapolis, MD, USA, 5-10th January 1997.
    [Abstract] and [compressed postscript version]
  • Bashar Nuseibeh, To Be And Not To Be: On Managing Inconsistency in Software Development, Proceedings of 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design (IWSSD-8), pp164-169, Scloss Velen, Germany, 22-23 March 1996, IEEE CS Press.
    [Abstract] and [compressed postscript version]

    • Related Websites
  • NASA Independent Validation & Verification Facility (West Virginia, USA). (Industrial support)

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  • Computer Engineering Section, Department of Electronic Engineering and Information Sciences (DEI), Politecnico di Milano, Italy

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  • Department of Computing Science and Engineering, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

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  • Distributed Software Engineering Group, Imperial College, London

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  • Distributed Software Engineering Seminars, Imperial College, London

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  • The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Homepage

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    This page is maintained by Alessandra Russo. Last Change: 1/6/99.

    If you have comments or suggestions, email me at ar3@doc.ic.ac.uk