An Architecture to infer Business Rules from Event Condition Action Rules implemented in the Persistence Layer

The business rules that govern the behaviour of a business process can be hardcoded in different ways in a software application. The modernization or improvement of these applications to a process-oriented perspective implies typically the modification of the business rules. Frequently, legacy systems are not well-documented, and almost always, the documentation they have is not updated. As a consequence many times is necessary the analysis of source code and databases structures to be transformed into a business language more understandable by the business experts involved in the modernization process. Database triggers are one of the artefacts in which business rules are hardcoded. We focus on this kind of artefacts, having in mind to avoid the manual analysis of the triggers by a database expert, and bringing it closer to business experts. To get this aim we need to discover business rules that are hardcoded in triggers, and translate it into vocabularies that are commonly used by business experts. In this paper we propose an ADM-based architecture to discover business rules and rewrite then into a language that can be understood by the business experts.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2009-13714Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2010-20057-C03-02Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2010-21744-C02-

An OCL-Based approach to derive constraint test cases for database applications

The development of database applications in most CASE tools has been insufficient because most of these tools do not provide the software necessary to validate these appli-cations. Validation means ensuring whether a given application fulfils the user require-ments. We suggest validation of database applications by using the functional testing technique, which is a fundamental black-box testing technique for checking the software without being concerned about its implementation and structure. Our main contribu-tion to this work is in providing a MDA approach for deriving testing software from the OCL specification of the integrity constraints. This testing software is used to validate the database applications, which are used to enforce these constraints. The generated testing software includes three components: validation queries, test cases and initial data inserted before the testing process. Our approach is implemented as an add-in tool in Rational Rose called OCL2TestSW.This work has been partially supported by the project Thuban: Natural Interaction Platform for Virtual Attending in Real Environments (TIN2008-02711), and also by the Spanish research projects: MA2VICMR: Improving the access, analysis and visibility of the multilingual and multimedia information in web for the Region of Madrid (S2009/TIC-1542).Publicad

OCL2Trigger: Deriving active mechanisms for relational databases using Model-Driven Architecture

16 pages, 10 figures.-- Issue title: "Best papers from the 2007 Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC 2007), Melbourne, Australia, April 10-13, 2007, Australian Software Engineering Conference 2007".Transforming integrity constraints into active rules or triggers for verifying database consistency produces a serious and complex problem related to real time behaviour that must be considered for any implementation. Our main contribution to this work is to provide a complete approach for deriving the active mechanisms for Relational Databases from the specification of the integrity constraints by using OCL. This approach is designed in accordance with the MDA approach which consists of transforming the specified OCL clauses into a class diagram into SQL:2003 standard triggers, then transforming the standard triggers into target DBMS triggers. We believe that developing triggers and plugging them into a given model is insufficient because the behaviour of such triggers is invisible to the developers, and therefore not controllable. For this reason, a DBMS trigger verification model is used in our approach, in order to ensure the termination of trigger execution. Our approach is implemented as an add-in tool in Rational Rose called OCL2Trigger.This work is part of the "Software Process Management Platform: Modelling, reuse and measurement" TIN2004/07083 project.Publicad

A Generic Approach to Supporting the Management of Computerised Clinical Guidelines and Protocols

Clinical guidelines or protocols (CGPs) are statements that are systematically developed for the purpose of guiding the clinician and the patient in making decisions about appropriate healthcare for specific clinical problems. Using CGPs is one of the most effective and proven ways to attaining improved quality, optimised resource utilisation, cost containment and reduced variation in healthcare practice. CGPs exist mainly as paper-based natural language statements, but are increasingly being computerised. Supporting computerised CGPs in a healthcare environment so that they are incorporated into the routine used daily by clinicians is complex and presents major information management challenges. This thesis contends that the management of computerised CGPs should incorporate their manipulation (operations and queries), in addition to their specification and execution, as part of a single unified management framework. The thesis applies modern advanced database technology to the task of managing computerised CGPs. The event-condition-action (ECA) rule paradigm is recognised to have a huge potential in supporting computerised CGPs. In this thesis, a unified generic framework, called SpEM and an approach, called MonCooS, were developed for enabling computerised CGPs, to be specified by using a specification language, called PLAN, which follows the ECA rule paradigm; executed by using a software mechanism based on the ECA mechanism within a modern database system, and manipulated by using a manipulation language, called TOPSQL. The MonCooS approach focuses on providing clinicians with assistance in monitoring and coordinating clinical interventions while leaving the reasoning task to domain experts. A proof-of-concepts system, TOPS, was developed to show that CGP management can be easily attained, within the SpEM framework, by using the MonCooS approach. TOPS is used to evaluate the framework and approach in a case study to manage a microalbuminuria protocol for diabetic patients. SpEM and MonCooS were found to be promising in supporting the full-scale management of information and knowledge for the computerised clinical protocol. Active capability within modern DBMS is still experiencing significant limitations in supporting some requirements of this application domain. These limitations lead to pointers for further improvements in database management system (DBMS) functionality for ECA rule support. The main contributions of this thesis are: a generic and unified framework for the management of CGPs; a general platform and an advanced software mechanism for the manipulation of information and knowledge in computerised CGPs; a requirement for further development of the active functionality within modern DBMS; and a case study for the computer-based management of microalbuminuria in diabetes patients

Effect preservation in transaction processing in rule triggering systems

Rules provide an expressive means for implementing database behavior: They cope with changes and their ramifications. Rules are commonly used for integrity enforcement, i.e., for repairing database actions in a way that integrity constraints are kept. Yet, Rule Triggering Systems fall short in enforcing effect preservation, i.e., guaranteeing that repairing events do not undo each other, and in particular, do not undo the original triggering event. A method for enforcement of effect preservation on updates in general rule triggering systems is suggested. The method derives transactions from rules, and then splits the work between compile time and run time. At compile time, a data structure is constructed, that analyzes the execution sequences of a transaction and computes minimal conditions for effect preservation. The transaction code is augmented with instructions that navigate along the data structure and test the computed minimal conditions. This method produces minimal effect preserving transactions, and under certain conditions, provides meaningful improvement over the quadratic overhead of pure run time procedures. For transactions without loops, the run time overhead is linear in the size of the transaction, and for general transactions, the run time overhead depends linearly on the length of the execution sequence and the number of loop repetitions. The method is currently being implemented within a traditional database system

Making object-oriented databases more knowledgeable (From ADAM to ABEL)

Tesis leida en la Universidad de Aberdeen. 178 p.The salient points of this thesis are as follows: • Object-Oriented Databases can help in solving the impedance mismatch problem by introducing methods. However, methods have sometimes been overused in the sense th at the code encapsulated refers not only to how the operation is implemented but also to other kinds of knowledge that are implicit in the code. The disadvantages of this approach for modelling integrity constraints, user-defined relationships and active behaviour are pointed out. • The ADAM Object-Oriented Database has been extended to allow the designer to specify integrity constraints declaratively. A constraint equation approach is implemented th at supports the inheritance of constraints. • A need for semantic-rich user-defined relationships has been identified. In this thesis, relationships are represented as objects. An approach to enhance the semantics of relationships in both its structural and behavioural aspects is presented. The most novel idea of the approach presented is the support of the inferred properties and the operational semantics of relationships. • Active Databases have recently become an im portant area of research. This thesis shows how to extend an Object-Oriented Database with active capabilities. The principal contribution lies in representing as ‘first-class’ objects not only the active rules but also the rule manager itself. Hence, besides handling active rules as any other object in the system, future requirements can be supported just by specialising the current rule manager. • Active rules have been proposed for several purposes. Several examples, are given of the direct use of rules. However, higher level tools can be provided of which rule