alyzing the Use of the Strategy

The strategy was used in several case studies. From this
experience, some advantages of it are mentioned:
• Natural language allows communication with stake-
holders, enhancing models validation.
• LEL and business rules models allow engineer to
define objects from a global perspective, enhancing
the specific behavior defined in a use case.
• From the object-oriented perspective, this strategy
improves the analysis phase, by the incorporation
of stakeholder-oriented techniques.
• From the requirements perspective, this strategy
extends the requirements capture phase to the defi-
nition of an object-oriented conceptual model that
allows engineer to visualize the problem in terms of
objects, the same concept that he will use in the rest
of the development process. A conceptual object
model is obtained that serves as a basis for RUP
oriented development, reducing the gap between
analysis and design phases allowing that transition
between conceptual modeling and design phase
results in a more natural process (Kotonya &
Sommerville, 1998).
• This strategy identifies and maintains the trace
relationships generated by the application of the
heuristics, allowing traceability between the RUP
business model and LEL, scenarios and business
rules models. It also defines internal RUP models
traces and internal requirements models traces. Each
trace relationship links two or more model compo-
nents, defining its semantics, that is, the origin
component, the source, cardinality and the kind of
relationship between the components.
The main difficulties found during the application of
the strategy are:
• One of the most significant problems is the level of
detail of the specifications. Depending on the level,
more or less classes can be found. But, this problem
is inherent to specifications, independent on a par-
ticular strategy.
• It is very important to deal with the redundancy
between the LEL, business rules and scenarios to
avoid translating it to the object model.
• As the strategy generates a lot of traceability infor-
mation, it is necessary to define what trace relation-
ships are managed, since if all of the possible links
are generated, the maintaining will be tedious, time
consuming and labor-intensive.