Inconsistency Management in Software Engineering: Survey and Open Research Issues

The development of complex software systems is a complex and lengthy activity that involves the participation and collaboration of many stakeholders (e.g. customers, users, analysts, designers, and developers). This results in many partial models of the developing system. These models can be inconsistent with each other since they describe the system from different perspectives and reflects the views of the stakeholders involved in their construction. Inconsistent software models can have negative and positive effects in the software development life-cycle. On the negative side, inconsistencies can delay and increase the cost of system development; do not guarantee some properties of the system, such as safety and reliability; and generate difficulties on system maintenance. On the positive side, inconsistencies can facilitate identification of some aspects of the system that need further analysis, assist with the specification of alternatives for the development of the system, and support elicitation of information about it. The software engineering community has proposed many techniques and methods to support the management of inconsistencies in various software models. In this paper, we present a survey of these techniques and methods. The survey is organized according to a conceptual framework which views inconsistency management as a process composed of six activities. These activities are the detection of overlaps, detection of inconsistencies, diagnosis of inconsistencies, handling of inconsistencies, tracking of inconsistencies, and specification and application of a management policy for inconsistencies. This paper also presents the main contributions of the research work that has been conducted to support each of the above activities and identifies the issues which are still open to further research.