Abstract

Diagnosis of large and complex software systems is a challenging task that can highly benefit from monitoring of the high-level functional requirements. This research studies the potential of applying requirements monitoring for a software system of high complexity: the combat management system (CMS) of a modern and technological advanced naval platform. An effort is made to apply a monitoring technique that can be used for autonomizing of this system while limiting implementation impact. The goal of this thesis is to show the feasibility of using requirements monitoring in a CMS by presenting the design, implementation and simulation of a diagnostics expert system prototype. Additional uses such as software developer support and user assistance are also explored. The KAOS goal-oriented requirements engineering method is used to extract software system goals from previously documented requirements. With these high-level objectives as a starting point, the ReqMon requirements monitoring framework is applied. An implementation model is defined, identifying what data transformations are needed to apply the ReqMon system. This model is implemented as a prototype in a JESS development environment. Simulations show that detailed diagnosis of a complex software system as a CMS is feasible. They also demonstrate that the combination of requirements monitoring and rule-based reasoning provide a solid foundation for various levels of autonomy in an existing combat management system.