A visualization tool for scenario-based software development

In a scenario-based software development, a lot of scenarios should be described in order to clarify the whole behaviors of the target software. By reusing scenarios of similar software systems, it becomes more efficient to newly describe scenarios of the target software. A differential scenario includes the difference between sequences of events of the two scenarios and the difference between nouns in the scenarios. If the nouns of the two scenarios are commonly used in the two scenarios, we regard the two scenarios specify the same or similar system. If the sequences of the events of the two scenarios are corresponding each other, we regard behavior of the two scenarios are similar. In this paper, we derive differential information including different words and events from two scenarios. Then, we propose a method of scenario retrieval using differential information between two scenarios. This method enables to detect similar scenarios for a given scenario. The proposed method and a prototype system for creating and visualizing differential scenario and a retrieval system will be illustrated with examples.