Miki: a wiki for synchronous modeling of software requirements

Eliciting a high quality requirements model that can be traced down to implementations is a challenge. Keeping models updated for evolving software systems is a further challenge. Formal modelling methods are one approach - but one that is too rigid and costly for many small software engineering companies [1]. We propose a light-weight alternative, using a wiki as the synchronous bridge between requirements capture and more formal modeling features of the IDE such as Eclipse

A Systematic Review of Tracing Solutions in Software Product Lines

Software Product Lines are large-scale, multi-unit systems that enable massive, customized production. They consist of a base of reusable artifacts and points of variation that provide the system with flexibility, allowing generating customized products. However, maintaining a system with such complexity and flexibility could be error prone and time consuming. Indeed, any modification (addition, deletion or update) at the level of a product or an artifact would impact other elements. It would therefore be interesting to adopt an efficient and organized traceability solution to maintain the Software Product Line. Still, traceability is not systematically implemented. It is usually set up for specific constraints (e.g. certification requirements), but abandoned in other situations. In order to draw a picture of the actual conditions of traceability solutions in Software Product Lines context, we decided to address a literature review. This review as well as its findings is detailed in the present article.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, 7 table

P ORTOLAN: a Model-Driven Cartography Framework

Processing large amounts of data to extract useful information is an essential task within companies. To help in this task, visualization techniques have been commonly used due to their capacity to present data in synthesized views, easier to understand and manage. However, achieving the right visualization display for a data set is a complex cartography process that involves several transformation steps to adapt the (domain) data to the (visualization) data format expected by visualization tools. To maximize the benefits of visualization we propose Portolan, a generic model-driven cartography framework that facilitates the discovery of the data to visualize, the specification of view definitions for that data and the transformations to bridge the gap with the visualization tools. Our approach has been implemented on top of the Eclipse EMF modeling framework and validated on three different use cases

A Model-Based Approach to Impact Analysis Using Model Differencing

Impact analysis is concerned with the identification of consequences of changes and is therefore an important activity for software evolution. In modelbased software development, models are core artifacts, which are often used to generate essential parts of a software system. Changes to a model can thus substantially affect different artifacts of a software system. In this paper, we propose a modelbased approach to impact analysis, in which explicit impact rules can be specified in a domain specific language (DSL). These impact rules define consequences of designated UML class diagram changes on software artifacts and the need of dependent activities such as data evolution. The UML class diagram changes are identified automatically using model differencing. The advantage of using explicit impact rules is that they enable the formalization of knowledge about a product. By explicitly defining this knowledge, it is possible to create a checklist with hints about development steps that are (potentially) necessary to manage the evolution. To validate the feasibility of our approach, we provide results of a case study.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, In: Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Quality and Maintainability (SQM), ECEASST Journal, vol. 65 201

Trust in MDE Components: the DOMINO Experiment

International audienceA large number of modeling activities can be automatic or computer assisted. This automation ensures a more rapid and robust software development. However, engineers must ensure that the models have the properties required for the application. In order to tend towards this requirement, the DOMINO project (DOMaINs and methodological prOcess) proposes to use the socalled trustworthy Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) components and aims to provide a methodology for the validation and qualification of such components

Achieving QVTO & ATL Interoperability: An Experience Report on the Realization of a QVTO to ATL Computer

With the emergence of a number of model transformation languages the need for interoperability among them increases. The degree at which this interoperability can be achieved between two given languages depends heavily on their paradigms (declarative vs imperative). Previous studies have indicated that the QVT and ATL languages are compatible. In this paper we study the possibility to compile QVT Operational to the ATL virtual machine. We describe our experience of developing such a compiler. The resulting compiled QVT transformations can run on top of existing ATL tools. Thereby we achieve not only QVT/ATL interoperability but also QVT conformance for the ATL tools as defined in the QVT specification

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

Automated code generation support for BI with MDA TALISMAN

Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is gaining ever more strength due to the fact that with MDE the software development can be much more productive and this is the way to go closer to real software industrialization. With MDA TALISMAN, we have succeeded in creating complex software solutions for food traceability adapted to different customers, ready to be deployed. We rely on the approach to MDE most extended at present, MDA (Model-Driven Development) but as we shall see, we also use the main pillars that support the Software Factories, The proposal from Microsoft to MDE. Besides, in this paper we present five cases of success with MDA TALISMAN

Addressing Fine-Grained Variability in User-Centered Software Product Lines: A Case Study on Dashboards

Software product lines provide a theoretical framework to generate and customize products by studying the target domain and by capturing the commonalities among the potential products of the family. This domain knowledge is subsequently used to implement a series of configurable core assets that will be systematically reused to obtain products with different features to match particular user requirements. Some kind of interactive systems, like dashboards, require special attention as their features are very fine-grained. Having the capacity of configuring a dashboard product to match particular user requirements can improve the utility of these products by providing the support to users to reach useful insights, in addition to a decrease in the development time and an increase in maintainability. Several techniques for implementing features and variability points in the context of SPLs are available, and it is important to choose the right one to exploit the SPL paradigm benefits to the maximum. This work addresses the materialization of fine-grained variability in SPL through code templates and macros, framed in the particular domain of dashboards