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Requirements reflection: requirements as runtime entities

Authors:

Anthony Finkelstein,

Emmanuel LetierAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE '10: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 2

Pages 199 - 202

https://doi.org/10.1145/1810295.1810329

Published: 01 May 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Computational reflection is a well-established technique that gives a program the ability to dynamically observe and possibly modify its behaviour. To date, however, reflection is mainly applied either to the software architecture or its implementation. We know of no approach that fully supports requirements reflection- that is, making requirements available as runtime objects. Although there is a body of literature on requirements monitoring, such work typically generates runtime artefacts from requirements and so the requirements themselves are not directly accessible at runtime. In this paper, we define requirements reflection and a set of research challenges. Requirements reflection is important because software systems of the future will be self-managing and will need to adapt continuously to changing environmental conditions. We argue requirements reflection can support such self-adaptive systems by making requirements first-class runtime entities, thus endowing software systems with the ability to reason about, understand, explain and modify requirements at runtime.

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Cited By

Hashmi SDam HBaruwal Chhetri MUzunov AColman AVo Q(2025)Proactive self-exploration: Leveraging information sharing and predictive modelling for anticipating and countering adversariesExpert Systems with Applications10.1016/j.eswa.2024.126118267(126118)Online publication date: Apr-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2024.126118
Heyn HKnauss EMalleswaran IDinakaran S(2024)An empirical investigation of challenges of specifying training data and runtime monitors for critical software with machine learning and their relation to architectural decisionsRequirements Engineering10.1007/s00766-024-00415-429:1(97-117)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-024-00415-4
Cavalcante EBatista TOquendo F(2024)Looking back and forward: A retrospective and future directions on software engineering for systems‐of‐systemsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.2697Online publication date: 9-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.2697
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Index Terms

Requirements reflection: requirements as runtime entities
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software development process management
      1. Software development methods
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. System description languages
      1. Specification languages

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE '10: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 2

May 2010

554 pages

ISBN:9781605587196

DOI:10.1145/1810295

General Chairs:
Jeff Kramer
Imperial College, London, UK
,
Judith Bishop
Microsoft Research, Redmond
,
Program Chairs:
Prem Devanbu
University of California at Davis
,
Sebastian Uchitel
University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and Imperial College London, UK

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 01 May 2010

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ICSE '10: 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering

May 1 - 8, 2010

Cape Town, South Africa

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Cited By

Hashmi SDam HBaruwal Chhetri MUzunov AColman AVo Q(2025)Proactive self-exploration: Leveraging information sharing and predictive modelling for anticipating and countering adversariesExpert Systems with Applications10.1016/j.eswa.2024.126118267(126118)Online publication date: Apr-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2024.126118
Heyn HKnauss EMalleswaran IDinakaran S(2024)An empirical investigation of challenges of specifying training data and runtime monitors for critical software with machine learning and their relation to architectural decisionsRequirements Engineering10.1007/s00766-024-00415-429:1(97-117)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-024-00415-4
Cavalcante EBatista TOquendo F(2024)Looking back and forward: A retrospective and future directions on software engineering for systems‐of‐systemsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.2697Online publication date: 9-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.2697
Tei KTahara YOhsuga A(2023)Towards Scalable Model Checking of Reflective Systems via Labeled Transition SystemsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.317440849:3(1299-1322)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2022.3174408
Hashmi SDam HUzunov AChhetri MGhose AColman A(2023)Goal-Driven Adversarial Search for Distributed Self-Adaptive Systems2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Services Engineering (SSE)10.1109/SSE60056.2023.00034(198-209)Online publication date: Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SSE60056.2023.00034
Vierhauser MEgyed A(2023)Runtime Monitoring for Systems of SystemDigital Transformation10.1007/978-3-662-65004-2_8(203-222)Online publication date: 3-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65004-2_8
Ramanathan G(2023)Synthesizing Multi-agent System Organization from Engineering DescriptionsEngineering Multi-Agent Systems10.1007/978-3-031-48539-8_11(167-177)Online publication date: 26-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48539-8_11
Grubb ASpoletini P(2023)Bringing Stakeholders Along for the Ride: Towards Supporting Intentional Decisions in Software EvolutionRequirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality10.1007/978-3-031-29786-1_4(56-64)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29786-1_4
Heyn HKnauss EMalleswaran IDinakaran S(2023)An Investigation of Challenges Encountered When Specifying Training Data and Runtime Monitors for Safety Critical ML ApplicationsRequirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality10.1007/978-3-031-29786-1_14(206-222)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29786-1_14
Wohlrab RMeira-Góes RVierhauser MSchmerl BMaggio MCámara J(2022)Run-time adaptation of quality attributes for automated planningProceedings of the 17th Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems10.1145/3524844.3528063(98-105)Online publication date: 18-May-2022
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