Engineering Methods in the Service-Oriented Context : 4th IFIP WG 8.1 Working Conference on Method Engineering, ME 2011, Paris, France, April 20-22, 2011. Proceedings

International audienceThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th IFIP WG 8.1 Working Conference on Method Engineering, ME 2011, held in Paris, France, in April 2011. The 13 revised full papers and 6 short papers presented together with the abstracts of two keynote talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 30 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on situated method engineering, method engineering foundations, customized methods, tools for method engineering, new trends to build methods, and method engineering services

The notion of specialization in the i*framework

This thesis provides a formal proposal for the specialization relationship in the i* framework that allows its use in a well-defined manner. I root my proposal over existing works in different areas that are interested in representing knowledge: knowledge representation from Artificial Intelligence and conceptual modeling and object-oriented programming languages from Software Development. Also, I use the results of a survey conducted in the i* community that provides some insights about what i* modelers expect from specialization. As a consequence of this twofold analysis, I identify three specialization operations: extension, refinement and redefinition. For each of them, I: - motivate its need and provide some rationale; - distinguish the several cases that can occur in each operation; - define the elements involved in each of these cases and the correctness conditions that must be fulfilled; - demonstrate by induction the fulfilment of the conditions identified for preserving satisfaction; - provide some illustrative examples in the context of an exemplar about travel agencies and travelers. The specialization relationship is offered by the i* framework through the is-a construct defined over actors (a subactor is-a superactor) since it was first released. Although the overall meaning of this construct is highly intuitive, its effects at the level of intentional elements and dependencies are not always clear, hampering seriously its appropriate use. In order to be able to reason about correctness and satisfaction, I define previously the conditions that must be preserved when a specialization takes place. In addition, I provide a methodology with well-defined steps that contextualize the formal aspects of this thesis in a development process. As a conclusion, this thesis is making possible the use of the specialization relationship in i* in a precise, non-ambiguous manner

Engineering Adaptive Model-Driven User Interfaces for Enterprise Applications

Enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning systems have numerous complex user interfaces (UIs). Usability problems plague these UIs because they are offered as a generic off-the-shelf solution to end-users with diverse needs in terms of their required features and layout preferences. Adaptive UIs can help in improving usability by tailoring the features and layout based on the context-of-use. The model-driven UI development approach offers the possibility of applying different types of adaptations on the various UI levels of abstraction. This approach forms the basis for many works researching the development of adaptive UIs. Yet, several gaps were identified in the state-of-the-art adaptive model-driven UI development systems. To fill these gaps, this thesis presents an approach that offers the following novel contributions: - The Cedar Architecture serves as a reference for developing adaptive model-driven enterprise application user interfaces. - Role-Based User Interface Simplification (RBUIS) is a mechanism for improving usability through adaptive behavior, by providing end-users with a minimal feature-set and an optimal layout based on the context-of-use. - Cedar Studio is an integrated development environment, which provides tool support for building adaptive model-driven enterprise application UIs using RBUIS based on the Cedar Architecture. The contributions were evaluated from the technical and human perspectives. Several metrics were established and applied to measure the technical characteristics of the proposed approach after integrating it into an open-source enterprise application. Additional insights about the approach were obtained through the opinions of industry experts and data from real-life projects. Usability studies showed the approach’s ability to significantly improve usability in terms of end-user efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction

Digital 3D Technologies for Humanities Research and Education: An Overview

Digital 3D modelling and visualization technologies have been widely applied to support research in the humanities since the 1980s. Since technological backgrounds, project opportunities, and methodological considerations for application are widely discussed in the literature, one of the next tasks is to validate these techniques within a wider scientific community and establish them in the culture of academic disciplines. This article resulted from a postdoctoral thesis and is intended to provide a comprehensive overview on the use of digital 3D technologies in the humanities with regards to (1) scenarios, user communities, and epistemic challenges; (2) technologies, UX design, and workflows; and (3) framework conditions as legislation, infrastructures, and teaching programs. Although the results are of relevance for 3D modelling in all humanities disciplines, the focus of our studies is on modelling of past architectural and cultural landscape objects via interpretative 3D reconstruction methods