Twelve Design Patterns for Integrating and Normalizing Product Model Schemas
This article reviews a method for generating a product model from user data and introduces 12 de- sign patterns for resolving conflicts that may occur in the integration and normalization process. The generat- ing method and design patterns were evaluated during a project to integrate the product models collected from three different precast concrete companies in the United States, testing the new method of product model genera- tion. The application results indicate that the 12 design patterns are effective and sufficient for resolving most known schema conflicts and for integrating and normal- izing multiple product models into a single well-formed product model.
In this paper, we discuss the problem of transforming a natural language requirements specification into a formal specification. We present several methods to support the process and implemented them in a commercial tool, the Requirements Quality Suite. We achieve this by enriching the requirement text with additional structure (using a knowledge base) and asking the requirement engineer to formulate the requirements in Boilerplates. The additional structure is used to analyze the requirements automatically or semi-automatically leading finally to a formal specification. The formal specification then enables verification activities, such as testing or formal analysis. We discuss our methods by examples from an industrial case study and report on our experiences.