An Ontology Based Requirement Rule Consistency Checking Framework

In this paper, we investigate how ontologies developed for use in Semantic Web technology could be used in automated consistency checking of application requirements. Ontology Driven Architecture allows developers would discover shareable domain models and knowledge bases from a variety of interrelated repositories and then wire them together with the remaining objectoriented components for user interface and control. Domain knowledge base(domain Ontology) captures domain concepts, relationships and rules. Requirements rules should note violate these rules or contradict the usual business behaviour. This paper suggests a rule editing and validation framework RECC (REquirement-rule Consistency Checking)that guides an analyst to enter (application specific) requirement rules. It rests on Semantic Web technologies together with reasoning engines, which operate with semantic representations.A practical validation of the approach by instantiating this framework with OWL and reasoning engines is presented here. When requirement rules are authored with RECC the acquired requirements would comply with both business needs and domain knowledge.