An approach to defining requirements for exceptions

Abstract

When exception handling is required for a software system, the defining the requirements of the desired behavior in the presence of exceptional conditions is generally defined as an add-on to the core requirements. This is necessary because by definition, requirements define desired behavior, and exceptions are undesired, abnormal situations. Consequently, by using separate mechanisms to define:normal" processing and "exceptional" processing, the requirements statements do not provide a unified way of analyzing behavior, potentially allowing undesired effects during execution. This paper proposes a new approach, based on usage modeling, to unifying the specification of normal behavior and exceptional behavior into one model. Keywords: exception handling, usage models, state machines, requirements specification. © 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg.