Knowledge-based approach to structural integrity verification in requirements analysis and logical system specification

Constructing an accurate representation of an information system that meets user requirements and translating these requirements into appropriate logical system specifications are two time-consuming tasks in the systems development life cycle. Though many structured methodologies are effective in enhancing communication between analysts and users, they provide limited support in representing an information system accurately. Furthermore, translating a user requirement, expressed as a function of this representation, into its logical equivalent is still a tedious task that is often performed manually by an analyst. This paper describes a knowledge-based approach to the representation of an information system as a Petri net. The characteristics of the network are then used to verify the system's structural integrity during the requirements analysis and system specification phases. The knowledge-based approach described is implemented in the logic programming language PROLOG.