Abstract :
[en] Conceptual modeling languages are purposeful artifacts, hence their design should also start from the purpose that
they serve. Such purposeful design addresses the requirements engineering concern of a language specification being aligned
with the goals of its users. Thereby relevance of the language is ensured, instead of developing a language for language’s sake.
We posit that this addresses some known issues that are due to a misalignment between a language’s specification and the goals
of its intended users.
In this paper, we introduce vGREL, a goal- and value-oriented approach for purposeful language development. vGREL helps
language engineers to start the design of conceptual modeling languages with requirements engineering exercises. To this end
vGREL provides (1) a purpose driven requirements engineering process for language design; (2) a value profile for the Goaloriented Requirements Language (GRL) to enable analysis and reasoning during the process and capture its results; and leverages
(3) the software tool support of GRL for decision making during language design. To illustrate vGREL, we apply it to a case study
on responsibility-based access rights management. Furthermore, we present reflections on vGREL from the language engineer
involved in the case study.
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