XANUI: A Textual Platform-Independent Model for Rich User Interfaces

In recent years, several model-driven proposals have defined user interface models that can represent both behavioural and aesthetic aspects. However, the software industry has ignored the majority of these proposals because the quality of the rich user interfaces generated out of these models is usually low and their code generators are not flexible, i.e., the UI templates cannot be customised easily. Furthermore, these proposals do not facilitate the separation between the visual design of the UI, normally performed by graphic designers in the industry, and the visualisation of data, which has been previously modelled using another domain-specific language. This paper proposes a new textual domain-specific language called XANUI, which could be embedded in XML-based UI pages, e.g., HTML or XML. The designed language provides the mechanisms to bind visual components with data structures already existing, and to define the behaviour of these components based on events. In this paper, XANUI is integrated in two OOH4RIA development processes, i.e., the traditional data-intensive and the new design-first process, thus reusing the OOH4RIA models and transformations to generate a complete rich Internet application for any platform or device. In order to validate this approach, the XANUI solution is applied to the development of a RIA with two UI types: a) the administration view of a Web application using HTML5 and AngularJS, and b) a catalogue application for e-Commerce using Windows RT in a Tablet PC

Consistency in multi-viewpoint architectural design

This thesis presents a framework that aids in preserving consistency in multi-viewpoint designs. In a multi-viewpoint design each stakeholder constructs his own design part. We call each stakeholder’s design part the view of that stakeholder. To construct his view, a stakeholder has a viewpoint. This viewpoint defines the design concepts, the notation and the tool support that the stakeholder uses. The framework presented in this thesis focuses on architectural multiviewpoint design of distributed systems. A distributed system is a system of which the parts execute on different physical system nodes. Interaction between the system parts plays an important role in such systems. An example of a distributed system is a mobile communication network. In such a network, the parts of the system execute on e.g. the mobile telephones of the clients, the desktops of the employees of the network operator and the mobile access points. Architectural design is the area of design that focuses on higher levels of abstraction in the design process. The lowest level of abstraction that we consider is the level at which the system parts correspond to parts that can be deployed on communication middleware. Using our framework, consistency is preserved through inter-viewpoint relations and consistency rules that must be specified by the stakeholders. The stakeholders use inter-viewpoint relations to specify how one view relates to another and they use consistency rules to specify what rules must at least be satisfied in a consistent design. To aid in preserving consistency, our framework defines: – a common set of basic design concepts; – pre-defined inter-viewpoint relations; – pre-defined consistency rules; – a language to represent inter-viewpoint relations and consistency rules. The basic design concepts that the framework defines have been adopted from earlier work. These concepts were developed by carefully examining the area of distributed systems design. Using our framework, viewpoint-specific design concepts must be defined as compositions or specializations of these basic concepts. Hence, the basic concepts form a common vocabulary that the different stakeholders can use to understand each other’s designs. The framework pre-defines inter-viewpoint relations that can be reused to specify how one view relates to another. The two main types of inter-viewpoint relations that it pre-defines are: refinement relations and overlap relations. Refinement relations exist between views that (partly) consider the same design concerns at different levels of abstraction. Overlap relations exist between views that (partly) consider the same design concerns at the same level of abstraction. We derived the pre-defined relations by examining existing frameworks for multi-viewpoint design and extracting frequently occurring relations between viewpoints in these frameworks. If a pre-defined inter-viewpoint relation exists between two views, this implies that certain consistency rules must be satisfied. Specifically, if two views have a refinement relation, this implies that one must preserve the system properties specified by the other. If two views have an overlap relation, this implies that the two views must be equivalent with respect to the overlap that they have. Our framework pre-defines consistency rules that can be re-used to verify these properties. We define an architecture for tool-support to aid in specifying view relations and consistency rules and to check whether the specified consistency rules hold. The architecture contains the pre-defined relations and consistency rules, such that they can be re-used. As a case study for the framework we define adapted versions of the RM-ODP enterprise, computational and information viewpoints, using our framework. We define the concepts from these viewpoints as compositions of the basic concepts. Also, we define the relations between views from these viewpoints, as well as the corresponding consistency rules, using the relations and consistency rules that are pre-defined by the framework. The results of the case study support the claim that our framework aids in preserving consistency in multi-viewpoint designs

Incorporating Security Behaviour into Business Models Using a Model Driven Approach

There has, in recent years, been growing interest in Model Driven Engineering (MDE), in which models are the primary design artifacts and transformations are applied to these models to generate refinements leading to usable implementations over specific platforms. There is also interest in factoring out a number of non-functional aspects, such as security, to provide reusable solutions applicable to a number of different applications. This paper brings these two approaches together, investigating, in particular, the way behaviour from the different sources can be combined and integrated into a single design model. Doing so involves transformations that weave together the constraints from the various aspects and are, as a result, more complex to specify than the linear pipelines of transformations used in most MDE work to date. The approach taken here involves using an aspect model as a template for refining particular patterns in the business model, and the transformations are expressed as graph rewriting rules for both static and behaviour elements of the models

A Pattern-Based Approach to Manage Model References

Model references play an important role in model integration, especially when models belonging to different domains are to be integrated. They are also needed in various model transformation tasks. In some cases, they need to be instantiated systematically, following certain rules. This calls for an instantiation specification of model references. In this paper we propose a pattern-based approach for modeling, specifying, and finally applying model references. We represent model references as so-called collaboration patterns, modeled as UML collaborations. We further describe the instantiation rules of collaboration patterns. A tool has been implemented for establishing the model references according to the specification, allowing the designer to assist in the process of semi-automated model reference instantiation. We demonstrate the usefulness of the approach and tools by applying them in designing Web service orchestrations

An engineering process for security patterns application in component based models

International audienceSecurity engineering with patterns is currently a very active area of research. Security patterns - an adaptation of Design Patterns to security - capture experts' experience in order to solve recurrent security problems in a structured and reusable way. In this paper, our objective is to describe an engineering process, called SCRIP (SeCurity patteRn Integration Process), which provides guidelines for integrating security patterns into component-based models. SCRIP defines activities and products to integrate security patterns in the whole development process, from UML component modeling until aspect code generation. The definition of SCRIP has been made using the OMG standard Software and System Process Engineering Meta-model (SPEM). We are developing a CASE tool to support that process

A template-based approach for responsibility management in executable business processes

Process-oriented organisations need to manage the different types of responsibilities their employees may have w.r.t. the activities involved in their business processes. Despite several approaches provide support for responsibility modelling, in current Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) the only responsibility considered at runtime is the one related to performing the work required for activity completion. Others like accountability or consultation must be implemented by manually adding activities in the executable process model, which is time-consuming and error-prone. In this paper, we address this limitation by enabling current BPMS to execute processes in which people with different responsibilities interact to complete the activities. We introduce a metamodel based on Responsibility Assignment Matrices (RAM) to model the responsibility assignment for each activity, and a flexible template-based mechanism that automatically transforms such information into BPMN elements, which can be interpreted and executed by a BPMS. Thus, our approach does not enforce any specific behaviour for the different responsibilities but new templates can be modelled to specify the interaction that best suits the activity requirements. Furthermore, libraries of templates can be created and reused in different processes. We provide a reference implementation and build a library of templates for a well-known set of responsibilities