How software changes the world: The role of assumptions

The requirements for most software systems - the intended states-of-affairs these systems are supposed to bring about - concern their operational environment, often a socio-physical world. But software systems usually don't have any direct means to change that environment in order to bring about the intended states-of-affairs. In what sense then can we say that such systems fulfill their requirements? The main purpose of this paper is to account for this paradox. We do so by proposing a preliminary Ontology of Assumptions. This ontology aims to characterize and make explicit a number of notions that are used implicitly in software engineering practice to establish that a system specification S fulfills its requirements R given a set of assumptions A. Our proposal is illustrated with an example concerning a meeting scheduler.

Tipo Pubblicazione: 
Contributo in atti di convegno
Author or Creator: 
Wang, Xiaowei
Mylopoulos, John
Guizzardi, Giancarlo
Guarino, Nicola
Source: 
IEEE Tenth International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS 2016), pp. 1–12, 1-3/6/2016
Date: 
2016
Resource Identifier: 
http://www.cnr.it/prodotto/i/366269
https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/RCIS.2016.7549327
info:doi:10.1109/RCIS.2016.7549327
http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-84987678596&origin=inward
urn:isbn:9781479987092
Language: 
Eng
ISTC Author: 
Ritratto di Nicola Guarino
Real name: