Towards an Ontology-Based Approach for Reusing Non-Functional Requirements Knowledge

Requirements Engineering play a crucial role during the software development process. Many works have pointed out that Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) are currently more important than Functional Requirements. NFRs can be very complicated to understand due to its diversity and subjective nature. The NDR Framework has been proposed to fill some of the existing gaps to facilitate NFR elicitation and modeling. In this thesis, we introduce a tool that plays a major role in the NDR Framework allowing software engineers to store and reuse NFR knowledge. The NDR Tool converts the knowledge contained in Softgoal Interdependency Graphs (SIGs) into a machine-readable format that follows the NFR and Design Rationale (NDR) Ontology. It also provides mechanisms to query the knowledge base and produces graphical representation for the results obtained. To evaluate whether our approach aids eliciting NFRs, we conducted an experiment performing a software development scenario

Assisting software architects in architectural decision-making using Quark

Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) and constraints are among the principal drivers of architectural decision-making. NFRs are improved or damaged by architectural decisions (ADs), while constraints directly include or exclude parts of the architecture (e.g., logical components or technologies). We may determine the impact of an AD, or which parts of the architecture are affected by a constraint, but at the end it is hard to know if we are respecting the NFRs and the imposed constraints with all the ADs made. In the usual approach, architects use their own experience to produce software architectures that comply with the NFRs and imposed constraints, but at the end, especially for crucial decisions, the architect has to deal with complex trade-offs between NFRs and juggle with possible incompatibilities raised by the imposed constraints. In this paper we present Quark, a method to assist software architects in architectural decision-making, and the conceptualization of the relationship between NFRs and ADs defined in Arteon, an ontology to represent and manage architectural knowledge. Finally, we provide an overview of the Quark and Arteon implementation, the ArchiTech tool.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Web application for reliability analysis within civil aviation domain

Analýzy spolehlivosti jsou klíčovými složkami při hodnocení posouzení rizik během fáze návrhu v leteckém průmyslu. Analýza stromu poruch (FTA) a analýza poruchových režimů a efektů (FMEA) se běžně kombinují při analýze systému a vyhodnocování možných poruch. Kombinování metodik vyžaduje sjednocení struktury dat tak, aby byla použitelná pro všechny analytické metody zároveň. Existující aplikace poskytují nástroje samostatně, což vede k nekonzistenci dat, duplikátům a překlepům při migraci napříč aplikacemi. Tato práce si klade za cíl vytvořit rozšiřitelné řešení, které by poskytlo nástroje k provedení jedné z technik FTA a FMEA a přitom se spoléhalo na ontologický model použitelný pro obě techniky zároveň. Diplomová práce analyzuje existující řešení a ontologie a na základě těchto vstupů navrhuje nezbytné požadavky, které jsou ve spolupráci se zúčastněnými doménovými odborníky prioritizovány. Výsledné řešení implementuje aplikaci zaměřenou primárně na FTA, která nabízí definování partonomie systému, konstrukci FTA a automatický převod stromů do FMEA vzhledem k jednotnému ontologickému modelu. Aplikace je na závěr otestována doménovými odborníky na základě skutečných leteckých dat.Reliability analyses are key components in a risk assessment evaluation during the design phase in an aviation industry. Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) are commonly combined together to review the system and to evaluate possible failures. The combination of methodologies requires a unified data usable for all the analyses. Existing applications provide the tools separately which introduces inconsistencies, duplicates and typos when the data are migrated across the applications. This thesis thus aims to create an extensible solution that would provide tools to perform one of FTA and FMEA techniques and yet rely on an ontological model usable for both. The thesis analyses existing solutions and ontologies and given these inputs proposes necessary requirements that are prioritized in cooperation with involved domain experts. The resulting solution implements an application focusing primarily on FTA which offers possibilities for system partonomy definition, FTA construction and an automatic conversion of the trees to FMEA tables given the unified ontological model. The application is finally reviewed by the domain experts on real aviation data

Enhanced SPARQL-based design rationale retrieval

Design rationale (DR) is an important category within design knowledge, and effective reuse of it depends on its successful retrieval. In this paper, an ontology-based DR retrieval approach is presented, which allows users to search by entering normal queries such as questions in natural language. First, an ontology-based semantic model of DR is developed based on the extended issue-based information system-based DR representation in order to effectively utilize the semantics embedded in DR, and a database of ontology-based DR is constructed, which supports SPARQL queries. Second, two SPARQL query generation methods are proposed. The first method generates initial SPARQL queries from natural language queries automatically using template matching, and the other generates initial SPARQL queries automatically from DR record-based queries. In addition, keyword extension and optimization is conducted to enhance the SPARQL-based retrieval. Third, a design rationale retrieval prototype system is implemented. The experimental results show the advantages of the proposed approach

GQ-BPAOntoSOA: A goal- and object- based semantic framework for deriving software services from an organisation’s goals and riva business process architecture

Understanding a business organisation is a primary activity that is required for deriving service-oriented systems that assist in carrying out the business activities of an organisation. Business IT alignment is one of the hot topics that concerns with aligning business needs and system needs in order to keep a business organisation competitive in a market. One example in this area is the BPAOntoSOA framework that aligned business process architecture and the service-oriented model of computing. The BPAOntoSOA framework is a semantically enriched framework for deriving service oriented architecture candidate software services from a Riva-based business process architecture. The BPAOntoSOA framework was recently proposed in order to align the candidate software services to the business processes presented in a Riva business process architecture. The activities of the BPAOntoSOA framework are structured into two-semantic-based layers that are formed in a top-down manner. The top layer, the BPAOnt ontology instantiation layer, concerned with conceptualising the Riva business process architecture and the associated business process models. The bottom layer, which is the software service identification layer, concerned with the semantic identification of the service-oriented architecture candidate software services and their associated capabilities. In this layer, RPA clusters were used to describe the derived candidate software service. Ontologies were used in order to support addressing the semantic representation. However, the BPAOntoSOA framework has two limitations. First, the derived candidate software services are identified without considering the business goals. Second, the desired quality of service requirements that constrain the functionality of the software services are absent. This research is concerned with resolving these two limitations within the BPAOntoSOA framework. In this research, the original BPAOntoSOA framework has been extended into the GQ-BPAOntoSOA framework. A new semantic-based layer has been added into the two original layers. The new layer is concerned with conceptualising the goal- and quality- oriented models in order to address their absence in the original BPAOntoSOA framework. The new layer is called the GQOnt ontology instantiation layer. This extension has highlighted the need for aligning the models within the original BPAOnt intonation layer with the ones in the new layer. This is because the BPAOnt was the base for the identification of the candidate software services and capabilities. Therefore, a novel alignment approach has been proposed in order to address this need. Also, the original service identification approach is refined in order to adapt with the integration of goals and quality requirements.The GQ-BPAOntoSOA framework, which is a goal-based and quality-linked extended BPAOntoSOA framework, has been evaluated using the Cancer Care Registration process. This is the same case study used in the evaluation of the BPAOntoSOA framework. And this is required in order to investigate the implication of integrating goals and quality requirements into the pre-existing BPAOntoSOA framework-driven candidate software services. This has shown that: (1) the GQOnt ontology does not only contribute to the extension of the BPAOntoSOA framework, yet it also contributes to providing a semantic representation of a business strategy view for an organisation. The GQOnt ontology acts as an independent repository of knowledge in order to have an early agreement between stakeholders with regard to business goals and quality requirements. The semantic representation could be reused for different purposes with respect to the needs. (2) the alignment approach has bridged the gap between goal-oriented models and Riva-based business process architectures. (3) the Riva business process architecture modelling method and business process models have been enriched with the integration of goals and quality requirements in order to provide a rich representation of business process architecture and process models that reflect an important information for the given organisation. (4) The service identification approach used in the original BPAOntoSOA framework has been enriched with goals and quality requirements. This has affected the identification of candidate software services (clusters) and their capabilities. Also, the derived candidate software services have conformed to service-oriented architecture principles. Accordingly, This research has bridged the gap between the BPAOntoSOA framework and the business goals and quality requirements. This is anticipated to lead to highly consistent, correct and complete software service specifications

ELICA: An Automated Tool for Dynamic Extraction of Requirements Relevant Information

Requirements elicitation requires extensive knowledge and deep understanding of the problem domain where the final system will be situated. However, in many software development projects, analysts are required to elicit the requirements from an unfamiliar domain, which often causes communication barriers between analysts and stakeholders. In this paper, we propose a requirements ELICitation Aid tool (ELICA) to help analysts better understand the target application domain by dynamic extraction and labeling of requirements-relevant knowledge. To extract the relevant terms, we leverage the flexibility and power of Weighted Finite State Transducers (WFSTs) in dynamic modeling of natural language processing tasks. In addition to the information conveyed through text, ELICA captures and processes non-linguistic information about the intention of speakers such as their confidence level, analytical tone, and emotions. The extracted information is made available to the analysts as a set of labeled snippets with highlighted relevant terms which can also be exported as an artifact of the Requirements Engineering (RE) process. The application and usefulness of ELICA are demonstrated through a case study. This study shows how pre-existing relevant information about the application domain and the information captured during an elicitation meeting, such as the conversation and stakeholders' intentions, can be captured and used to support analysts achieving their tasks.Comment: 2018 IEEE 26th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshop

Formal and quantitative approach to non-functional requirements modeling and assessment in software engineering

In the software market place, in which functionally equivalent products compete for the same customer, Non Functional Requirements (NFRs) become more important in distinguishing between the competing products. However, in practice, NFRs receive little attention relative to Functional Requirements (FRs). This is mainly because of the nature of these requirements which poses a challenge when taking the choice of treating them earlier in the software development. NFRs are subjective, relative and they become scattered among multiple modules when they are mapped from the requirements domain to the solution space. Furthermore, NFRs can often interact, in the sense that attempts to achieve one NFR can help or hinder the achievement of other NFRs at particular software functionality. Such an interaction creates an extensive network of interdependencies and tradeoffs among NFRs which is not easy to trace or estimate. This thesis contributes towards achieving the goal of managing the attainable scope and the changes of NFRs. The thesis proposes and empirically evaluates a formal and quantitative approach to modeling and assessing NFRs. Central to such an approach is the implementation of the proposed NFRs Ontology for capturing and structuring the knowledge on the software requirements (FRs and NFRs), their refinements, and their interdependencies. In this thesis, we also propose a change management mechanism for tracing the impact of NFRs on the other constructs in the ontology and vice-versa. We provide a traceability mechanism using Datalog expressions to implement queries on the relational model-based representation for the ontology. An alternative implementation view using XML and XQuery is provided as well. In addition, we propose a novel approach for the early requirements-based effort estimation, based on NFRs Ontology. The effort estimation approach complementarily uses one standard functional size measurement model, namely COSMIC, and a linear regression techniqu

Ontological approach to derive product configurations from a Software Product Line Reference Architecture

Abstract Software Product Lines (SPL) based on reuse, claim to improve evolution, time to market and decrease software development costs. Concrete software products or systems, members of the SPL family, are derived by instantiating a generic Reference Architecture (RA), holding common and variant components. The construction of RA is a complex and costly task, as well as its usage for product derivation, due to the huge number of variants, essentially caused by non functional requirements variability. In consequence, the selection of an RA instance or Feasible Solution (FS), meeting RA constraints and customer requirements, is not straightforward. In this work RA is built by a bottom-up process from existing products; RA and its instances are represented by a non-directed connected graph. The HIS-RA Ontology also represents RA and captures Healthcare Integrated Information Systems (HIS) domain knowledge. Moreover, FS must be connected (the induced graph by FS in RA has no isolated components), consistent (it verifies consistency rules among FS components), and working (it meets domain functional (FR) and non functional (NFR) requirements). The main goal of this paper is to define a semiautomatic process (FFSP), to derive consistency rules using the HIS-RA Ontology built-in reasoning capabilities, to construct consistent, connected and working FS. Software quality is considered by FFSP in the traceability between FR and NFR, and it is specified by ISO/IEC 25010, to guarantee RA evolution and the overall concrete product configuration quality. FFSP is validated on a HIS domain a case study

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications