Construction of a taxonomy for requirements engineering commercial-off-the-shelf components

This article presents a procedure for constructing a taxonomy of COTS products in the field of Requirements Engineering (RE). The taxonomy and the obtained information reach transcendental benefits to the selection of systems and tools that aid to RE-related actors to simplify and facilitate their work. This taxonomy is performed by means of a goal-oriented methodology inspired in GBRAM (Goal-Based Requirements Analysis Method), called GBTCM (Goal-Based Taxonomy Construction Method), that provides a guide to analyze sources of information and modeling requirements and domains, as well as gathering and organizing the knowledge in any segment of the COTS market. GBTCM claims to promote the use of standards and the reuse of requirements in order to support different processes of selection and integration of components.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A framework for selecting workflow tools in the context of composite information systems

When an organization faces the need of integrating some workflow-related activities in its information system, it becomes necessary to have at hand some well-defined informational model to be used as a framework for determining the selection criteria onto which the requirements of the organization can be mapped. Some proposals exist that provide such a framework, remarkably the WfMC reference model, but they are designed to be appl icable when workflow tools are selected independently from other software, and departing from a set of well-known requirements. Often this is not the case: workflow facilities are needed as a part of the procurement of a larger, composite information syste m and therefore the general goals of the system have to be analyzed, assigned to its individual components and further detailed. We propose in this paper the MULTSEC method in charge of analyzing the initial goals of the system, determining the types of components that form the system architecture, building quality models for each type and then mapping the goals into detailed requirements which can be measured using quality criteria. We develop in some detail the quality model (compliant with the ISO/IEC 9126-1 quality standard) for the workflow type of tools; we show how the quality model can be used to refine and clarify the requirements in order to guarantee a highly reliable selection result; and we use it to evaluate two particular workflow solutions a- ailable in the market (kept anonymous in the paper). We develop our proposal using a particular selection experience we have recently been involved in, namely the procurement of a document management subsystem to be integrated in an academic data management information system for our university.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

DesCOTS-EV: a tool for the evaluation of COTS components

In the last years, some methods have been proposed for dealing with COTS component selection. In all of them, a key point is the comparison of the user requirements, which drive the selection process, with the capabilities of the evaluated COTS. Quality models are a means to obtain structured descriptions of COTS domains. Once built, COTS in a domain may be evaluated with respect to the quality entities included therein, quality requirements may be stated with respect to the quality model, and the classical factor-requirement negotiation process may be used for the selection of the most appropriate COTS. Our goal is to have completely implemented in a near future a new version of the system DesCOTS (Grau et al., 2004) that supports all the above processes. This system is constituted by 4 subsystems: QM, that helps in the construction and management of quality models (Carvallo et al., 2004); EV, that helps in the evaluation of COTS components and that is the one presented in this paper; SL, that helps in the definition of requirements in a project and in the selection of COTS components that hold these requirements; and AD, that allows the administration of the whole system.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Building sound COTS products taxonomies

The acquisition of process of COTS products requires the identification of the suitable products. The evaluation of COTS products varies from type to type, e.g. a DBMS has to be evaluated differently from a web browser. The techniques used to integrate the COTS products are strongly dependent on the type of products. The same applies to the architectural patterns and style used to build COTS-based systems. So it is important to be able to classify COTS products into homogeneous classes. Taxonomies are a tool to perform such a classification.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Construction of a taxonomy for requirements engineering commercial-off-the-shelf components

This article presents a procedure for constructing a taxonomy of COTS products in the field of Requirements Engineering (RE). The taxonomy and the obtained information reach transcendental benefits to the selection of systems and tools that aid to RE-related actors to simplify and facilitate their work. This taxonomy is performed by means of a goal-oriented methodology inspired in GBRAM (Goal-Based Requirements Analysis Method), called GBTCM (Goal-Based Taxonomy Construction Method), that provides a guide to analyze sources of information and modeling requirements and domains, as well as gathering and organizing the knowledge in any segment of the COTS market. GBTCM claims to promote the use of standards and the reuse of requirements in order to support different processes of selection and integration of components.Facultad de Informátic

Descubriendo la arquitectura de sistemas de software híbridos: un enfoque basado en Modelos i*

La mayoría de sistemas de software modernos se construyen integrando componentes de diversa naturaleza (comerciales, código libre, componentes legados, etc.), formando arquitecturas híbridas. La construcción de este tipo de sistemas se caracteriza por la adquisición de diversos componentes a proveedores externos a la organización que se integran con algún software hecho a medida. La correcta aplicación de este enfoque requiere la temprana identificación de los servicios que el sistema deberá brindar y su agrupación en dominios atómicos (los actores del sistema), que serán posteriormente remplazados de una manera “oportunista”, por los componentes más apropiados, independientemente de su naturaleza y origen. En este artículo abordamos este aspecto y proponemos un método basado en la utilización de modelos i*, que permite identificar los actores del sistema y su estructuración en una arquitectura de partida. El método es ilustrado con un caso práctico en una empresa de telecomunicaciones.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

DesCOTS: a software system for selecting COTS components

Selection of commercial-off-the-shelf software components (COTS components) has a growing importance in software engineering. Unfortunately, selection projects have a high risk of ending up into abandonment or yielding an incorrect selection. The use of some software engineering practices such as the definition of quality models can reduce this risk. We defined a process for COTS components selection based on the use of quality models and we started to apply it in academic and industrial cases. The need of having a tool to support this process arose and, although some tools already exist to partially support the involved activities, none of them was suitable enough. Because of this we developed DesCOTS, a software system that embraces several tools that interact to support the different activities of our process. The system has been designed taking into account not only functional concerns but also nonfunctional aspects such as reusability, interoperability and portability. We present in this paper the different subsystems of DesCOTS and discuss about their applicability.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Construction of a taxonomy for requirements engineering commercial-off-the-shelf components

This article presents a procedure for constructing a taxonomy of COTS products in the field of Requirements Engineering (RE). The taxonomy and the obtained information reach transcendental benefits to the selection of systems and tools that aid to RE-related actors to simplify and facilitate their work. This taxonomy is performed by means of a goal-oriented methodology inspired in GBRAM (Goal-Based Requirements Analysis Method), called GBTCM (Goal-Based Taxonomy Construction Method), that provides a guide to analyze sources of information and modeling requirements and domains, as well as gathering and organizing the knowledge in any segment of the COTS market. GBTCM claims to promote the use of standards and the reuse of requirements in order to support different processes of selection and integration of components.Facultad de Informátic

COSTUME: un método para la combinación de modelos de calidad

El uso de modelos de calidad durante la selección de componentes COTS (Comercial Off-The-Shelf) proporciona un entorno adecuado para la descripción de los dominios a los que éstos pertenecen. En este artículo tratamos la construcción de modelos de calidad para Sistemas Software basados en Componentes COTS (SSCC), que definiremos como sistemas compuestos por varios componentes COTS interconectados. Los procesos de selección llevados a cabo para obtener un SSCC requieren la selección de varios productos COTS. Proponemos un método para la construcción de modelos de calidad para SSCC basado en la aplicación de cuatro actividades. Nuestro objetivo es conseguir que los factores de calidad que aparecen en los SSCC estén definidos en términos de los factores de calidad de los componentes COTS y, de esta forma, obtener eficientemente modelos de calidad y sean fáciles de entender, analizar, mantener y reutilizar.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Goal-based reasoning in the construction of taxonomies for COTS components

In a previous work, our research group GESSI has proposed the construction of a taxonomy for classifying COTS components by means of characterization attributes to arrange domains which COTS components belong to, and also grouping these domains into categories [4]. In this report we present our first applicability study of GBRAM (Goal Based-Requirements Analysis Method) as a goal-based reasoning method for the construction of taxonomies of COTS components; more concretely for exploring the “characterization attributes” that are used to browse the taxonomy through an example: the context of the Application Development Tools. We illustrate the main aspects of customizing GBRAM to this objective and remark the methodological aspect we want to achieve in our future work: to propose guidelines for the construction of any taxonomy of COTS components.Postprint (published version