Numerous studies in recent months have proposed the use of linguistic instruments to support requirements analysis. There are two main reasons for this: (i) the progress made in natural language processing and (ii) the need to provide the developers of software systems with support in the early phases of requirements definition and conceptual modelling. This paper presents the results of an online market research intended (a) to assess the economic advantages of developing a CASE (computer-aided software engineering) tool that integrates linguistic analysis techniques for documents written in natural language, and (b) to verify the existence of the potential demand for such a tool. The research included a study of the language – ranging from completely natural to highly restricted – used in documents available for requirements analysis, an important factor given that on a technological level there is a trade-off between the language used and the performance of the linguistic instruments. To determine the potential demand for such tool, some of the survey questions dealt with the adoption of development methodologies and consequently with models and support tools; other questions referred to activities deemed critical by the companies involved. Through statistical correspondence analysis of the responses, we were able to outline two “profiles” of companies that correspond to two potential market niches, which are characterised by their very different approach to software development.
