Requirements-Level Programming for Rapid Software Evolution

摘要

Rapid development of evolving software systems is highly associated with the ability to react quickly to changing user requirements. This paper presents a coherent set of technologies for simplifying the path from evolving requirements to code. The most important novel element on this path is a language defined at the level of requirements (understandable for non-IT experts) that is equipped with operational semantics. This means that it is possible to translate specifications written in this language, automatically into executable code. The language also allows for easy detection of changes in requirements. This detection can be propagated down to the code structure and appropriate code parts (these that are not automatically generated) indicated for rework. It will be demonstrated that the presented approach is effective and suitable for a wide range of problem domains as opposed to domain-specific approaches. This will be shown through a case study for a typical business software system, performed with a novel tool suite.