A UML profile to support requirements engineering with KAOS

One of the most important approaches to requirements engineering of the last ten years is the KAOS model. The authors introduce a profile that allows the KAOS model to be represented in the UML. The paper includes an informal presentation of the profile together with a full account of the new stereotypes and tags. They also outline an integration of requirements models with lower level design models in the UML, leading to a uniform and comprehensive specification document. A UML profile can increase the usefulness of KAOS. A method can be truly successful only if a large number of professionals are sufficiently convinced of its potential to use it in industrial cases. Use of the UML to support requirements engineering with KAOS may help achieve this end

Goal sketching with activity diagrams

Goal orientation is acknowledged as an important paradigm in requirements engineering. The structure of a goal-responsibility model provides opportunities for appraising the intention of a development. Creating a suitable model under agile constraints (time, incompleteness and catching up after an initial burst of creativity) can be challenging. Here we propose a marriage of UML activity diagrams with goal sketching in order to facilitate the production of goal responsibility models under these constraints

Transforming timing diagrams into knowledge acquisition in automated specification

Requirements engineering is an important part of developing programs. It is an essential stage of the software development process that defines what a product or system should to achieve. The UML Timing diagram and Knowledge Acquisition in Automated Specification (KAOS) model are requirements engineering techniques. KAOS is a goal-oriented requirements approach while the Timing diagram is a graphical notation used for explaining software timing requirements. KAOS uses linear temporal logic (LTL) to describe time constraints in goal and operation models. Similarly, the Timing diagram can describe some temporal operators such as X (next), U (until) and R (release) over some period of time. Thus, our aim is to use the Timing diagram to generate parts of a KAOS model. In this paper we demonstrate techniques for creating a KAOS goal model from a Timing diagram. The Timing diagram which is used in this paper is adapted from the UML 2.0 Timing diagram and includes features to support translation into KAOS. We use a case study of a Lift system as an example to explain the translation processes described here

Change Impact Analysis based on Formalization of Trace Relations for Requirements

Evolving customer needs is one of the driving factors in software development. There is a need to analyze the impact of requirement changes in order to determine possible conflicts and design alternatives influenced by these changes. The analysis of the impact of requirement changes on related requirements can be based on requirements traceability. In this paper, we propose a requirements metamodel with well defined types of requirements relations. This metamodel represents the common concepts extracted from some prevalent requirements engineering approaches. The requirements relations in the metamodel are used to trace related requirements for change impact analysis. We formalize the relations. Based on this formalization, we define change impact rules for requirements. As a case study, we apply these rules to changes in the requirements specification for Course Management System

A goal-based approach to policy refinement

As the interest in using policy-based approaches for systems management grows, it is becoming increasingly important to develop methods for performing analysis and refinement of policy specifications. Although this is an area that researchers have devoted some attention to, none of the proposed solutions address the issue of deriving implementable policies from high-level goals. A key part of the solution to this problem is having the ability to identify the operations, available on the underlying system, which can achieve a given goal. This paper presents an approach by which a formal representation of a system, based on the Event Calculus, can be used in conjunction with abductive reasoning techniques to derive the sequence of operations that will allow a given system to achieve a desired goal. Additionally it outlines how this technique might be used for providing tool support and partial automation for policy refinement. Building on previous work on using formal techniques for policy analysis, the approach presented here applies a transformation of both policy and system behaviour specifications into a formal notation that is based on Event Calculus. Finally, it shows how the overall process could be used in conjunction with UML modelling and illustrates this by means of an example. 1

CHARACTERIZATION OF THE ELEMENTS THE GOAL DIAGRAM KAOS FROM NATURAL LANGUAGE

La educción de requisitos de software es una actividad propia de la primera fase del ciclo de vida del software, en ésta, se utilizan diferentes diagramas que ayudan al analista a efectuar el proceso de identificación y validación de requisitos de software, entre éstos, se utiliza el diagrama de objetivos de KAOS que permite: (i) establecer las responsabilidades de los actores; y (ii) expresar a los interesados (usuarios) la importancia del software futuro. En los trabajos que utilizan el diagrama de objetivos subsisten problemas tales como: (i) el analista es quien elabora el diagrama de objetivos de manera subjetiva; y (ii) no se identifica la trazabilidad del diagrama de objetivos obtenido con relación al universo del discurso presentado por el interesado en lenguaje natural. En este artículo, se realiza la identificación de los elementos básicos (objetivo, requisito, actor) del diagrama de objetivos de KAOS a partir de: (i) El uso del lenguaje natural; y (ii) la definición de reglas gramaticales. Este proceso sirve como punto de partida para: (i) la identificación de los demás elementos que componen el diagrama de objetivos de KAOS; y (ii) la elaboración automática de dicho diagrama. Palabras clave: Objetivo, requisito, actor, educción, desarrollo.The software requirements elicitation is an activity for the first phase of the software life cycle, in this, they use different diagrams that help the analyst to make the process of identifying and validating software requirements, among these, is used diagram KAOS goal enabling: (i) establish the responsibilities of the actors, and (ii) to express stakeholders (users) the importance of future software. In studies using the diagram of objectives still problems such as: (i) the analyst who prepared the diagram of objectives subjectively, and (ii) not identified traceability objectives diagram obtained in relation to the universe of discourse presented by the applicant in natural language. In this paper, we make the identification of basic elements (objective requirement actor) diagram KAOS goal from: (i) The use of natural language, and (ii) the definition of grammar rules. Thisprocess serves as the basis for: (i) identification of the other elements of the diagram KAOS goal, and (ii) the automatic production of this diagram

Semantics of trace relations in requirements models for consistency checking and inferencing

Requirements traceability is the ability to relate requirements back to stakeholders and forward to corresponding design artifacts, code, and test cases. Although considerable research has been devoted to relating requirements in both forward and backward directions, less attention has been paid to relating requirements with other requirements. Relations between requirements influence a number of activities during software development such as consistency checking and change management. In most approaches and tools, there is a lack of precise definition of requirements relations. In this respect, deficient results may be produced. In this paper, we aim at formal definitions of the relation types in order to enable reasoning about requirements relations. We give a requirements metamodel with commonly used relation types. The semantics of the relations is provided with a formalization in first-order logic. We use the formalization for consistency checking of relations and for inferring new relations. A tool has been built to support both reasoning activities. We illustrate our approach in an example which shows that the formal semantics of relation types enables new relations to be inferred and contradicting relations in requirements documents to be determined. The application of requirements reasoning based on formal semantics resolves many of the deficiencies observed in other approaches. Our tool supports better understanding of dependencies between requirements

ゴール指向洗練パターン駆動によるユースケースモデリング

ゴール指向要求分析手法KAOSは，要求を系統的，論理的にモデリングできる要求分析手法である．本論文では，ゴール指向要求分析の成果をオブジェクト指向設計プロセスに組込むことを意図して，KAOSモデルをユースケースモデルに変換するアプローチを提案する．この変換は洗練パターンを媒体としている．提案アプローチにより作成したユースケースモデルとあらかじめ用意された基準モデルを比較し，提案アプローチ適用の効果を評価するために，米国ATMシステムを事例とするユースケースモデリングに提案アプローチを適用した．この結果，提案アプローチは効果的に適用され，モデル変換における洗練パターンの意味（シナリオ）の継承と属人性の排除について効果を確認できた．We propose a practical and semi-formal transformation procedure from KAOS model to use case model. KAOS goal-oriented requirements methodology is useful for requirements engineering and well-established to model requirements systematically and logically. Proposed approach aims at reflecting artifact of KAOS modeling to an object-oriented design process as much as possible. It is based on that a use case model is positioned at requirements model of object-oriented design processes. We confirmed that our proposed approach was effective one through evaluating a case study on ATM system in United States

Ontology-based methodology for error detection in software design

Improving the quality of a software design with the goal of producing a high quality software product continues to grow in importance due to the costs that result from poorly designed software. It is commonly accepted that multiple design views are required in order to clearly specify the required functionality of software. There is universal agreement as to the importance of identifying inconsistencies early in the software design process, but the challenge is how to reconcile the representations of the diverse views to ensure consistency. To address the problem of inconsistencies that occur across multiple design views, this research introduces the Methodology for Objects to Agents (MOA). MOA utilizes a new ontology, the Ontology for Software Specification and Design (OSSD), as a common information model to integrate specification knowledge and design knowledge in order to facilitate the interoperability of formal requirements modeling tools and design tools, with the end goal of detecting inconsistency errors in a design. The methodology, which transforms designs represented using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) into representations written in formal agent-oriented modeling languages, integrates object-oriented concepts and agent-oriented concepts in order to take advantage of the benefits that both approaches can provide. The OSSD model is a hierarchical decomposition of software development concepts, including ontological constructs of objects, attributes, behavior, relations, states, transitions, goals, constraints, and plans. The methodology includes a consistency checking process that defines a consistency framework and an Inter-View Inconsistency Detection technique. MOA enhances software design quality by integrating multiple software design views, integrating object-oriented and agent-oriented concepts, and defining an error detection method that associates rules with ontological properties