Cutting and Pasting with Requirements Specifications Scenarios

Abstract

Wireless Telecommunications requirements specifications tend to be defined as sets of normative scenarios. These frequently only provide partial coverage of the scenarios that are necessary to give a comprehensive specification. Standard model checking techniques have not been successful in analysing such protocol specifications, first because of the high degree of concurrency that is inherent in such systems, and secondly because the very partial nature of the specifications tends to cause many inconsequential defects to be reported that frustrate the process of identifying key issues that have to be addressed immediately. Typically the inconsequential defects are addressed by adding new scenarios to the requirements, whereas significant defects require structural changes to the design itself and are not solved by adding new scenarios. This paper describes a technique for synthesising tractable phase automata from Message Sequence Chart scenarios that describe major phase transitions in the specifications. These can be automatically analysed to detect certain types of significant interactions between the scenarios that will be invariant under the addition of new scenarios to the requirements specifications.

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