Using graph-based techniques for temporal requirements engineering

The purpose of this work is to develop an approach for assisting the temporal requirements´ specification phase, within critical systems. We use a new typology taking into account all the common temporal properties one may meet when dealing with requirements specification. On the other hand, we develop a literal-words-based formal grammar able to express all the types of the identified requirements. The goal being to provide specification means which are at the same time simple, intuitive and rigorous. Then, in order to check requirements consistency, a graph-based algorithm has been elaborated. To our best knowledge, this is the first study which formalizes the consistency checking problem as a graph exploration. The whole of the developed mechanisms have been implemented in a prototype tool with an intuitive graphical interface that offers interesting facilities in terms of requirements´ specification and consistency-checking.