Relative Extraction Methodology for class diagram generation using dependency graph

Abstract

Requirement analysis is the preliminary step in software development process. The requirements stated by the clients are analyzed and an abstraction of it is created which is termed as requirements model. Unified Modeling Language (UML) models are helpful for understanding the problems, communicating with application experts and preparing documentation. The static design view of the system can be modeled using a UML class diagram. System requirements stated by the user are usually in natural language form despite a wide variety of formal languages and UML. This is an imprecise and inconsistent form which is difficult to be used by the developer for design. We present a new methodology for generating UML class diagrams or models from natural language problem statement or requirement specification. We have named our methodology as Relative Extraction Methodology which uses an intermediate graphical representation called dependency graph. This serves as a skeleton for the generation of UML class models. The natural language processing is done for the construction of dependency graph which is finally mapped to a class diagram.