Title: A development method of UML documents from requirement specifications using NLP

Authors: Masakazu Takahashi, Satoru Takahashi, Yoshikatsu Fujita

Addresses: Graduate School of Medical and Engineering, University of Yamanashi, 4-3-11, Takeda, Kofu, Yamanashi 400-8511, Japan. ' Mitsui Asset Trust and Banking Co., Ltd., 3-23-1 Shiba, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-0014, Japan. ' Graduate School of Business Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 3-29-1, Otsuka, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112-0012, Japan

Abstract: When inexperienced designers develop software using Object-Oriented method, there are the following problems: (a) there is not enough functions for the software and (b) there is a lack of consistency among Unified Modelling Language (UML) documents developed. In this paper, we propose an efficient development method of adequate UML documents which can be used by inexperienced designers. This method consists of three countermeasures: (1) develop requirement specifications that contain all information necessary for development of UML documents using Natural Language Processing (NLP), (2) share all information about developed UML documents and reuse it when developing other UML documents and (3) decide on a UML document development process for inexperienced designers. To evaluate proposed method, we conducted experiments and used questionnaires. The results show a correct answer rate became 120[%] for the proposed method in comparison with the conventional method, development time became 80[%] and usability was improved.

Keywords: UML; unified modelling language; requirement specifications; application development; NLP; natural language processing; software development; inexperienced designers; information sharing; information reuse; software design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2008.021939

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2008 Vol.33 No.2/3, pp.164 - 175

Published online: 10 Dec 2008 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article