Software Cinema-Video-based Requirements Engineering

The dialogue between end-user and developer presents several challenges in requirements development. One issue is the gap between the conceptual models of end-users and formal specification/analysis models of developers. This paper presents a novel technique for the video analysis of scenarios, relating the use of video-based requirements to process models of software development. It uses a knowledge model-an RDF graph-based on a semiotic interpretation of film language, which allows mapping conceptual into formal models. It can be queried with RDQL, a query language for RDF. The technique has been implemented with a tool which lets the analyst annotate objects as well as spatial or temporal relationships in the video, to represent the conceptual model. The video can be arranged in a scenario graph effectively representing a multi-path video. It can be viewed in linear time order to facilitate the review of individual scenarios by end-users. Each multi-path scene from the conceptual model is mapped to a UML use case in the formal model. A UML sequence diagram can also be generated from the annotations, which shows the direct mapping of film language to UML. This sequence diagram can be edited by the analyst, refining the conceptual model to reflect deeper understanding of the application domain. The use of the software cinema technique is demonstrated with several prototypical applications. One example is a loan application scenario for a financial services consulting firm which acted as an end-user