A comparative analisys of i*-based agent-oriented modeling languages

Agent-oriented models are frequently used in disciplines such as requirements engineering and organizational process modelling. i* is currently one of the most widespread notations used for this purpose. Due to its strategic nature, instead of a single definition, there exist several versions and variants, often not totally defined and even contradictory. In this paper we present a comparative study of the three most widespread i* variants: Eric Yu’s seminal proposal, the Goal-oriented Requirement Language (GRL) and the language used in the TROPOS method. Next, we propose a generic conceptual model to be used as reference framework of these three variants and we show its use for generating specific models for the three mentioned variants, as well as for other existing proposals.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

The case of KAO

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaRequirements engineering aims at eliciting, analyzing, specifying, validating and managing system requirements. When eliciting system requirements, it is possible to use various approaches, including goal-oriented and aspect-oriented approaches. Although those are two well-known approaches, they are seldom used in conjunction. On the other hand, when using goal-oriented approaches, one common and usual problem is the fact that some of the goals repeat themselves all over the system. This makes goal-oriented models to have a boost in complexity because of the repeating goals, and thus, making the evolution of this model harder than necessary. This complexity could be minimized if an aspect-oriented approach would be used. The big advantage of using a hybrid approach, in our case goal-oriented and aspect-oriented one is the possibility to identify all the scattered goals and modularize them as aspects. In this way we can represent this kind of goal (now an aspect) only once in the model. This means the complexity of the model will be greatly reduced and the readability of the model will also be improved. The final result will be an evolution that could be easily controlled, thus minimizing errors. Although this seems a good idea, there are some challenges to overcome when merging goals and aspects. First of all, a notation and a set of rules must be built in order to compose the model. In order to do this we will use patterns based on roles, as these will help elaborating the model. This work will present an approach that will make possible after modeling the system with a goal-oriented approach, identify aspects and then refine the model taking into account the aspects. In order to accomplish this, the KAOS methodology will be extended with aspects

The i* framework for goal-oriented modeling

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39417-6i* is a widespread framework in the software engineering field that supports goal-oriented modeling of socio-technical systems and organizations. At its heart lies a language offering concepts such as actor, dependency, goal and decomposition. i* models resemble a network of interconnected, autonomous, collaborative and dependable strategic actors. Around this language, several analysis techniques have emerged, e.g. goal satisfaction analysis and metrics computation. In this work, we present a consolidated version of the i* language based on the most adopted versions of the language. We define the main constructs of the language and we articulate them in the form of a metamodel. Then, we implement this version and a concrete technique, goal satisfaction analys is based on goal propagation, using ADOxx. Throughout the chapter, we used an example based on open source software adoption to illustrate the concepts and test the implementation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering: State of the Art and Research Trend

The Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE) is one approach that is widely used for the early stages of software development. This method continues to develop in the last three decades. In this paper, a literature study is conducted to determine the GORE state of the art. The study begins with a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted to determine the research trend in the last five years. This study reviewed 126 papers published from 2016 to 2020.  The research continues with the author's search for scientific articles about GORE. There are 26 authors who actively publish GORE research results. Twenty-six authors were grouped into seven groups based on their relation or co-authoring scientific articles. An in-depth study of each group resulted in a holistic mapping of GORE research.  Based on the analysis, it is known that most research focuses on improving GORE for an automated and reliable RE process, developing new models/frameworks/methods originating from GORE, and implementing GORE for the RE process. This paper contributes to a holistic mapping of the GORE approach. Through this study, it is known the various studies that are being carried out and research opportunities to increase automation in the entire RE process

Requirement modeling for data warehouse using goal-UML approach: the case of health care

Decision makers use Data Warehouse (DW) for performing analysis on business information. DW development is a long term process with high risk of failure and it is difficult to estimate the future requirements for the decision-making. Further, the current DW design does not consider the early and late requirements analysis during its development, especially by using Unified Modeling Language (UML) approach. Due to this problem, it is crucial that current DW modeling approaches covered both early and late requirements analysis in the DW design. A case study was conducted on Malaysia Rural Health Care (MRH) to gather the requirements for DW design. The goal-oriented approach has been used to analyze the early requirements and later was mapped to UML approach to produce a new DW modeling called Goal-UML (G-UML). The proposed approach highlighted the mapping process of DW conceptual schema to a class diagram to produce a complete MRH-DW design. The correctness of the DW design was evaluated using expert reviews. The G-UML method can contribute to the development of DW and be a guideline to the DW developers to produce an improved DW design that meets all the user requirement

Business Intelligence Healthcare Model: Getting the Right Requirements for Malaysian Rural Citizens

It is a big challenge for Malaysian healthcare authorities in providing services to rural communities. To meet up with the challenges, a concept called business intelligence (BI) is employed for their informed decision-making that utilizes their enormous data. However, only a few of BI initiatives have their success stories as many are still struggling to justify the investments. Among the most reason of the failures were that BI requirements were overlooked, leading to poor BI deployments. Taking rural healthcare in Malaysia as a case study, the paper attempts to model BI requirements using goal-oriented approach. Rural healthcare BI requirements were modelled two-folds: (1) decision making requirements, cantered on stakeholders; and (2) BI data requirements, focused on organizational and decisional aspects. The model can guide BI developers on the process and data needed in rural healthcare strategic decision-making. Theoretically it provides new insights and facilitates the improvement of new healthcare knowledge

Legal compliance by design (LCbD) and through design (LCtD) : preliminary survey

1st Workshop on Technologies for Regulatory Compliance co-located with the 30th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2017). The purpose of this paper is twofold: (i) carrying out a preliminary survey of the literature and research projects on Compliance by Design (CbD); and (ii) clarifying the double process of (a) extending business managing techniques to other regulatory fields, and (b) converging trends in legal theory, legal technology and Artificial Intelligence. The paper highlights the connections and differences we found across different domains and proposals. We distinguish three different policydriven types of CbD: (i) business, (ii) regulatory, (iii) and legal. The recent deployment of ethical views, and the implementation of general principles of privacy and data protection lead to the conclusion that, in order to appropriately define legal compliance, Compliance through Design (CtD) should be differentiated from CbD

Verifying goal-oriented specifications used in model-driven development processes

[EN] Goal-oriented requirements engineering promotes the use of goals to elicit, elaborate, structure, specify, analyze, negotiate, document, and modify requirements. Thus, goal-oriented specifications are essential for capturing the objectives that the system to be developed should achieve. However, the application of goal oriented specifications into model-driven development (MDD) processes is still handcrafted, not aligned in the automated flow from models to code. In other words, the experience of analysts and designers is necessary to manually transform the input goal-oriented models into system models for code generation (models compilation). Some authors have proposed guidelines to facilitate and partially automate this translation, but there is a lack of techniques to assess the adequacy of goal-oriented models as starting point of MDD processes. In this paper, we present and evaluate a verification approach that guarantees the automatic, correct, and complete transformation of goal-oriented models into design models used by specific MDD solutions. In particular, this approach has been put into practice by adopting a well-known goal-oriented modeling approach, the i* framework, and an industrial MDD solution called Integranova.This work has been developed with the support of FONDECYT under the projects AMoDDI 11130583 and TESTMODE 11121395.This work is also supported by EOSSAC project, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish government (TIN2013-44641-P).Giachetti Herrera, GA.; Marín, B.; López, L.; Franch, X.; Pastor López, O. (2017). Verifying goal-oriented specifications used in model-driven development processes. Information Systems. 64:41-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2016.06.011S41626