A metamodel for privacy engineering methods

Engineering privacy in information systems requires systematic methods to capture and address privacy issues throughout the development process. However, the diversity of both privacy and engineering approaches, together with the specific context and scope of each project, have spawned a plethora of privacy engineering methods. Method engineering can help to cope with this landscape, as it allows describing existing methods in terms of a limited variety of method elements (and eventually enable their recombination into new, customized methods). This paper applies method engineering to introduce a privacy engineering metamodel, whose applicability is illustrated with a set of popular privacy engineering method elements, and a widely recognized privacy engineering method

Towards an interoperable metamodel suite: size assessment as one input

In recent years, many metamodels have been introduced in the software engi- neering literature and standards. These metamodels vary in their focus across, for example, process, product, organizational and measurement aspects of software development and have typically been developed independently of each other with shared concepts being only accidental. There is thus an increasing concern in the standards communities that possible conicts of structure and semantics between these various metamodels will hinder their widespread adoption. The complexity of these metamodels has also increased significantly and is another barrier in their appreciation. This complexity is compounded when more than one metamodel is used in the lifecycle of a software project. Therefore there is a need to have interoperable metamodels. As a first step towards engendering interoperability and/or possible mergers between metamodels, we examine the size and complexity of various meta- models. To do this, we have used the Rossi and Brinkkemper metrics-based approach to evaluate the size and complexity of several standard metamodels including UML 2.3, BPMN 2.0, ODM, SMM and OSM. The size and complexity of these metamodels is also compared with the previous version of UML, BPMN and Activity diagrams. The comparatively large sizes of BPMN 2.0 and UML 2.3 suggest that future integration with these metamodels might be more difficult than with the other metamodels under study (especially ODM, SSM and OSM)

Refactoring software development process terminology through the use of ontology

peer-reviewedIn work that is ongoing, the authors are examining the extent of software development process terminology drift. Initial findings suggest there is a degree of term confusion, with the mapping of concepts to terms lacking precision in some instances. Ontologies are concerned with identifying the concepts of relevance to a field of endeavour and mapping those concepts to terms such that term confusion is reduced. In this paper, we discuss how ontologies are developed. We also identify various sources of software process terminology. Our work to date indicates that the systematic development of a software development process ontology would be of benefit to the entire software development community. The development of such an ontology would in effect represent a systematic refactoring of the terminology and concepts produced over four decades of software process innovation

Refactoring software development process terminology through the use of ontology

In work that is ongoing, the authors are examining the extent of software development process terminology drift. Initial findings suggest there is a degree of term confusion, with the mapping of concepts to terms lacking precision in some instances. Ontologies are concerned with identifying the concepts of relevance to a field of endeavour and mapping those concepts to terms such that term confusion is reduced. In this paper, we discuss how ontologies are developed. We also identify various sources of software process terminology. Our work to date indicates that the systematic development of a software development process ontology would be of benefit to the entire software development community. The development of such an ontology would in effect represent a systematic refactoring of the terminology and concepts produced over four decades of software process innovation

Towards a Formalization of a Framework to Express and Reason about Software Engineering Methods

Software Engineering is considered a knowledge-intensive discipline, in which knowledge creation, collection and sharing is an uninterrupted process. However, a large part of this knowledge exists in a tacit form and depends on practitioners. Therefore defining a mechanism to transform tacit knowledge into explicit one is of upmost importance. This paper presents a formalization approach to represent Software Engineering practitioners' tacit knowledge, which is related to their ways of working, as a set of explicit statements. The formalization is based on KUALI-BEH, which is a normative kernel extension of ESSENCE formal specification, and consists of three parts: an ontology to share a common representation of knowledge as a set of concepts; a Situational Method Engineering based algebra that represents well-defined method properties and operations; and a knowledge representation of the ontology and algebra using Description Logics. The main objectives of this initial formalization are to improve communication among humans and machines, computational inference and reuse of knowledge

DSL4SPM: Domain-specific language for software process modeling

This paper presents a novel formal approach to software process modeling based on the Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM) for the syntactic aspect of a process model and a domain-specific language (DSL) for the semantic aspect of the model. This approach provides a conceptual framework for designing processes in a more abstract way and to enable process implementation on various platforms. A Process-Centered Software Environment (PCSE) called DSL4SPM (Domain-Specific Language for Software Process Modeling) is a plug-in tool which satisfies the meta-requirements for Process Modeling Languages (PMLs). The key concept of the DSL4SPM is the use of a toolbox, containing SPEM elements, to instantiate objects in a graphical scene. The process model designer links these elements with relations, and defines the values of the attributes required for both these and the objects, with the aim of arriving at a consolidated view of the problem. An overview of the advantages of the approach is presented. With it, the process manager is able to quickly and easily model a process from innovative perspectives, with the aim of better understanding the risks associated with software development

Evaluating the quality of a set of modelling languages used in combination: A method and a tool

[EN] Modelling languages have proved to be an effective tool to specify and analyse various perspectives of enterprises and information systems. In addition to modelling language designs, works on model quality and modelling language quality evaluation have contributed to the maturity of the model-driven engineering (MDE) field. Although consolidated knowledge on quality evaluation is still relevant to this scenario, in previous works, we have identified misalignments between the topics that academia is addressing and the needs of industry in applying MDE, thus identifying some remaining challenges. In this paper, we focus on the need for a method to evaluate the quality of a set of modelling languages used in combination within a MDE environment. This paper presents MMQEF (Multiple Modelling language Quality Evaluation Framework), describing its foundations, presenting its method components and discussing its trade-offs. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work was supported by COLCIENCIAS (Colombia) (grant 512, 2010); the European Commision FP7 Project CaaS (611351).Giraldo-Velásquez, FD.; España Cubillo, S.; Giraldo, WJ.; Pastor López, O. (2018). Evaluating the quality of a set of modelling languages used in combination: A method and a tool. Information Systems. 77:48-70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2018.06.002S48707

Software modelling languages: A wish list

© 2015 IEEE. Contemporary software engineering modelling tends to rely on general-purpose languages, such as the Unified Modeling Language. However, such languages are practice-based and seldom underpinned with a solid theory-be it mathematical, ontological or concomitant with language use. The future of software modelling deserves research to evaluate whether a language base that is compatible with these various elements as well as being philosophically coherent offers practical advantages to software developers

Using a situational method engineering approach to identify reusable method fragments from the secure TROPOS methodology

Situational method engineering (SME) has as a focus a repository of method fragments, gleaned from extant methodologies and best practice. Using one such example, the OPF (OPEN Process Framework) repository, we identify deficiencies in the current SME support for securityrelated issues in the context of agent-oriented software engineering. Specifically, theoretical proposals for the development of reusable security-related method fragments from the agent-oriented methodology Secure Tropos are discussed. Since the OPF repository has already been enhanced by fragments from Tropos and other non-security-focussed agent-oriented software development methodologies, the only method fragments from Secure Tropos not already contained in this repository are those that are specifically security-related. These are identified, clearly defined and recommended for inclusion in the current OPF repository of method fragments. ©JOT 2010