Contextual retrieval mechanism for reusing task-based specifications

Proposes an approach to reusing requirements specifications, called "task-based specifications in conceptual graphs" (TBCG). In TBCG, the task-based specification methodology is used to serve as the mechanism to structure the knowledge captured in conceptual models, and conceptual graphs are adopted as the formalism to express the requirements specification. TBCG provides several mechanisms to facilitate the reuse of formal specifications: (i) a contextual retrieval mechanism to support context-sensitive specification retrieval and incremental context acquisition, (ii) a graph matching mechanism to compute the similarity between two graphs based on semantic matching and fuzzy logic, and (iii) a paraphraser to serve as an explanation mechanism for the retrieved specifications.