In accordance with a particular embodiment of the present invention, a method is offered that includes supporting requirement validation middleware and capturing global requirements or properties for one or more web applications. A template-based formalism is employed to capture the requirements or properties. A small set of relevant temporal patterns are provided from which to choose in capturing the global requirements or properties. In specific embodiments, the method uses a set of pre-coded semi-configurable checkers. A Java-like syntax is used to specify expressions. A library of atomic entities or events (to compose expressions) is automatically generated. In still other embodiments, a small set of light-weight automatically-customizable checkers are employed in capturing the global requirements or properties. The method can be used with both formal and semi-formal techniques.