Ontology Extraction from Software Requirements Using Named-Entity Recognition

With the software playing a key role in most of the modern, complex systems it is extremely important to create and keep the software requirements precise and non-ambiguous. One of the key elements to achieve such a goal is to define the terms used in a requirement in a precise way. The aim of this study is to verify if the commercially available tools for natural language processing (NLP) can be used to create an automated process to identify whether the term used in a requirement is linked with a proper definition. We found out, that with a relatively small effort it is possible to create a model that detects the domain specific terms in the software requirements with a precision of 87%. Using such model it is possible to determine if the term is followed by a link to a definition.