In: Information and Software Technology, Vol. 33, No. 6, pages 425-432. 1991.
Abstract: The accurate capture and representation of user requirements plays a critical role in the construction of effective and flexible information systems. One important component of a requirements specification is the definition of the behaviour of the system, i.e., those volatile concepts of the application domain that determine the dynamics of the information system. Failure to model and validate these volatile concepts results in inflexible systems that become increasingly unreliable to future changes. One way of overcoming the problem of inappropriate specification paradigms is to adopt models that focus on those procedures of the application domain which dictate organizational policy. To this end, the paper introduces the Rule-based Behaviour Model (RBM) as a means of specifying knowledge pertinent to the behaviour of a system