ABSTRACT This paper outlines a framework for specifying software requirements using semi-structured representation schema based on XML. Requirement Engineering demands a granular level of requirement specifications with key objectives, design constraints and relevant artifacts. There exist some structured approaches, but still these are not complete and do not have open formats that describe requirements of a system with its artifacts. This paper introduces SSRS (Semi-Structured Representation Schema), an XML-based adaptable specification approach for the structural representation of functional and non-functional requirements (NFR). The approach is a well-organized way of managing requirement metadata and comprehensive artifacts of requirements like status, priority, version, stability, elicitation source etc. The paper incorporates a case study of online assessment system for validating the instances with SSRS.
