XML-based requirements engineering for an electronic clearinghouse

We present methods and tools to support XML-based requirements engineering for an electronic clearinghouse that connects trading partners in the telecommunications area. The original semi-structured requirements, locally known as business rules, were written as message specifications in a non-standardized and error-prone format using MS Word. To remedy the resulting software failures and faults, we first formalized the requirements by designing an W3C XML Schema for the precise definition of the requirements structure. The schema allows a highly structured representation of the essential information in eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Second, to offer the requirements engineers the ability to edit the XML documents in a friendly way while preserving their information structure, we developed a custom editor called XLEdit. Third, by developing a converter from MS Word to the target XML format, we helped the requirements engineers to migrate the existing business rules. Fourth, we developed translators from the structured requirements to schema languages, which enabled automated generation of message-validation code. The increase in customer satisfaction and clearinghouse-service efficiency are primary gains from the investment in the technology for structured requirements editing and validation.