Programming Research Group Technical Monograph PRG-100

Joseph A Goguen

March 1992, 18 pages

This paper discusses the relationship between formal, context insensitive information, and informal, situated information, in the context of Requirements Engineering; these opposite but complementary aspects of information are called "the dry" and "the wet". Requirements Engineering has a strong need to reconcile the dry and the wet.

Following some background on the culture of Computing Science, the paper describes some projects in the Centre for Requirements and Foundations at Oxford. These are: a taxonomy for Requirements Engineering methods; applying techniques from sociology and sociolinguistics to requirements elicitation, and in particular, to determining the values of an organisation. These projects draw on ideas from ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. The paper also demonstrates that structures as dry as abstract data types occur in the ordinary discourse of social groups.