From: Andrew Gabb (agabb@tpgi.com.au)
Date: Mon Jun 07 2004 - 19:11:14 EST
dorfman@rahul.net wrote:
> Thanks, Ian. The reason I lumped tables and graphics with "natural
> language" is not that they are as ambiguous...although the can be, if
> the variables are improperly described...but because they _usually_
> require human interpretation, whereas formal languages can be
> manipulated, by completely objective (mathematical) rules or perhaps
> by machine.
> Merlin
I agree that tables and graphics can be part of a natural language representation of requirements, or that they can be more formal in nature. I'm a great believer in using tables and graphics when they improve the understanding of requirements. As Ian points out, there is a continuum across the NL/non-NL divide.
Merlin shows one of the strengths of non-NL methods above. The downside, of course, is that the actual meaning of such representations is rarely immediately obvious to users or others, which makes it somewhat more difficult to validate such requirements. Individual requirements may be unambiguous but getting a handle on the overall requirements is much more difficult.
Another problem is that non-NL methods tend to have limitations in the types of requirements they can represent (eg Z is generally limited to functional requirements, rather than performance requirements or other constraints). This means you normally need a mix of NL and non-NL anyway. Or you can just ignore those requirements which don't fit your representation, of course, which I've also seen bring down projects.
Andrew
-- Andrew Gabb email: agabb@tpgi.com.au Adelaide, South Australia phone: +61 8 8342-1021, fax: +61 8 8269-3280 ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To send a message to this mailing list send it to re-online@it.uts.edu.au. To unsubscribe from this mailing list, email majordomo@it.uts.edu.au with the message `unsubscribe re-online' in the BODY of the mail.
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