Requirements Capture and Analysis in ASSERT(TM)

Capturing high-level requirements in a human readable but formal representation suitable for analysis is an important goal for GE. To that end we have augmented an existing controlled-English modeling language with a new controlled-English requirements capture language to create the Requirements Capture frontend of the ASSERT(TM) tool suite. Requirements captured in ASSERT can be analyzed for a number of possible shortcomings, both individually and collectively. Once a set of requirements has reached a satisfactory level of completeness, consistency, etc., it can then be further used to generate test cases and test procedures. This paper will focus on the requirements capture and analysis functions of ASSERT and will illustrate its capabilities with a sample problem previously used as a challenge problem for requirements specification.