Classy – The Class Diagram Generator: From User Requirements Text

Abstract

Class diagrams play an important role in the software development process. As the Class diagram represents the structure of the system to be developed, a great effort is required to conduct the Class diagramming process accurately, to prevent system failure in the future. However, the creation of Class diagrams manually from lengthy text requirement specifications is a daunting and time-consuming task for Software Engineers and students alike. As a solution to ease the process of identifying class, attributes, relationships and methods from a requirement specification, and creating a Class diagram, a semi-automated solution is introduced. The implemented system uses Natural Language Processing techniques such as syntactic and semantic analysis to transform a requirement specification provided in the English language to a Class diagram. The system was tested against a set of case studies and could acquire 80% precision and 82.5% recall. Expert opinion on the system resulted in positive responses. It’s hoped that the solution will be beneficial to the target audience to reduce the time and effort required to manually create a class diagram.