Functional Size Measurement and Model Verification for Software Model-Driven Developments: A COSMIC-based Approach

Historically, software production methods and tools have a unique goal: to produce high quality software. Since the goal of Model-Driven Development (MDD) methods is no different, MDD methods have emerged to take advantage of the benefits of using conceptual models to produce high quality software. In such MDD contexts, conceptual models are used as input to automatically generate final applications. Thus, we advocate that there is a relation between the quality of the final software product and the quality of the models used to generate it. The quality of conceptual models can be influenced by many factors. In this thesis, we focus on the accuracy of the techniques used to predict the characteristics of the development process and the generated products. In terms of the prediction techniques for software development processes, it is widely accepted that knowing the functional size of applications in order to successfully apply effort models and budget models is essential. In order to evaluate the quality of generated applications, defect detection is considered to be the most suitable technique. The research goal of this thesis is to provide an accurate measurement procedure based on COSMIC for the automatic sizing of object-oriented OO-Method MDD applications. To achieve this research goal, it is necessary to accurately measure the conceptual models used in the generation of object-oriented applications. It is also very important for these models not to have defects so that the applications to be measured are correctly represented. In this thesis, we present the OOmCFP (OO-Method COSMIC Function Points) measurement procedure. This procedure makes a twofold contribution: the accurate measurement of objectoriented applications generated in MDD environments from the conceptual models involved, and the verification of conceptual models to allow the complete generation of correct final applications from the conceptual models involved. The OOmCFP procedure has been systematically designed, applied, and automated. This measurement procedure has been validated to conform to the ISO 14143 standard, the metrology concepts defined in the ISO VIM, and the accuracy of the measurements obtained according to ISO 5725. This procedure has also been validated by performing empirical studies. The results of the empirical studies demonstrate that OOmCFP can obtain accurate measures of the functional size of applications generated in MDD environments from the corresponding conceptual models.Marín Campusano, BM. (2011). Functional Size Measurement and Model Verification for Software Model-Driven Developments: A COSMIC-based Approach [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/11237Palanci

Control de riesgos en la generación de aplicaciones, utilizando el Desarrollo de Software Dirigido por Modelos (MDSD). Revisión de la literatura

El Desarrollo de Software Dirigido por Modelos tiene como principal objetivo especificar y explicitar los términos del negocio en modelos. Los modelos no solo al inicio del proceso de desarrollo de software, sino en todo el ciclo de vida a través de transformaciones. Con las transformaciones se le está ofreciendo a los desarrolladores la posibilidad de poder realizar la automatización de sus procesos llevando a un nivel de abstracción mayor la obtención de los artefactos. Utilizando los modelos, se mitigan los riesgos en los atributos de calidad del software, generados por la creciente complejidad de las aplicaciones, que han de satisfacer un mayor número de requisitos como: distribución, adaptabilidad, mantenibilidad y reutilización que hacen frente a la complejidad de las plataformas actuales. El presente artículo hace una revisión de diferentes artículos en los cuales se aborda el tema del uso del Desarrollo de Dirigido por Modelos para el control de riesgos en la generación de aplicaciones

In Search of Evidence for Model-Driven Development Claims: An Experiment on Quality, Effort, Productivity and Satisfaction

Context: Model-Driven Development (MDD) is a paradigm that prescribes building conceptual models that abstractly represent the system and generating code from these models through transformation rules. The literature is rife with claims about the benefits of MDD, but they are hardly supported by evidences. Objective: This experimental investigation aims to verify some of the most cited benefits of MDD. Method: We run an experiment on a small set of classes using student subjects to compare the quality, effort, productivity and satisfaction of traditional development and MDD. The experiment participants built two web applications from scratch, one where the developers implement the code by hand and another using an industrial MDD tool that automatically generates the code from a conceptual model. Results: Outcomes show that there are no significant differences between both methods with regard to effort, productivity and satisfaction, although quality in MDD is more robust to small variations in problem complexity. We discuss possible explanations for these results. Conclusions: For small systems and less programming-experienced subjects, MDD does not always yield better results than a traditional method, even regarding effort and productivity. This contradicts some previous statements about MDD advantages. The benefits of developing a system with MDD appear to depend on certain characteristics of the development context. 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work was developed with the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation project SMART ADAPT (TIN2013-42981-P), TIN2011-23216 and was co-financed by ERDF. It also has the support of Generalitat Valenciana-funded IDEO project (PROMETEOII/2014/039) and UV (UV-INV-PRECOMP13-115032).Panach Navarrete, JI.; España Cubillo, S.; Dieste, O.; Pastor López, O.; Juristo Juzgado, N. (2015). In Search of Evidence for Model-Driven Development Claims: An Experiment on Quality, Effort, Productivity and Satisfaction. Information and Software Technology. 62:164-186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2015.02.012S1641866

Verifying goal-oriented specifications used in model-driven development processes

[EN] Goal-oriented requirements engineering promotes the use of goals to elicit, elaborate, structure, specify, analyze, negotiate, document, and modify requirements. Thus, goal-oriented specifications are essential for capturing the objectives that the system to be developed should achieve. However, the application of goal oriented specifications into model-driven development (MDD) processes is still handcrafted, not aligned in the automated flow from models to code. In other words, the experience of analysts and designers is necessary to manually transform the input goal-oriented models into system models for code generation (models compilation). Some authors have proposed guidelines to facilitate and partially automate this translation, but there is a lack of techniques to assess the adequacy of goal-oriented models as starting point of MDD processes. In this paper, we present and evaluate a verification approach that guarantees the automatic, correct, and complete transformation of goal-oriented models into design models used by specific MDD solutions. In particular, this approach has been put into practice by adopting a well-known goal-oriented modeling approach, the i* framework, and an industrial MDD solution called Integranova.This work has been developed with the support of FONDECYT under the projects AMoDDI 11130583 and TESTMODE 11121395.This work is also supported by EOSSAC project, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish government (TIN2013-44641-P).Giachetti Herrera, GA.; Marín, B.; López, L.; Franch, X.; Pastor López, O. (2017). Verifying goal-oriented specifications used in model-driven development processes. Information Systems. 64:41-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2016.06.011S41626

Supporting Automatic Interoperability in Model-Driven Development Processes

By analyzing the last years of software development evolution, it is possible to observe that the involved technologies are increasingly focused on the definition of models for the specification of the intended software products. This model-centric development schema is the main ingredient for the Model-Driven Development (MDD) paradigm. In general terms, the MDD approaches propose the automatic generation of software products by means of the transformation of the defined models into the final program code. This transformation process is also known as model compilation process. Thus, MDD is oriented to reduce (or even eliminate) the hand-made programming, which is an error-prone and time-consuming task. Hence, models become the main actors of the MDD processes: the models are the new programming code. In this context, the interoperability can be considered a natural trend for the future of model-driven technologies, where different modeling approaches, tools, and standards can be integrated and coordinated to reduce the implementation and learning time of MDD solutions as well as to improve the quality of the final software products. However, there is a lack of approaches that provide a suitable solution to support the interoperability in MDD processes. Moreover, the proposals that define an interoperability framework for MDD processes are still in a theoretical space and are not aligned with current standards, interoperability approaches, and technologies. Thus, the main objective of this doctoral thesis is to develop an approach to achieve the interoperability in MDD processes. This interoperability approach is based on current metamodeling standards, modeling language customization mechanisms, and model-to-model transformation technologies. To achieve this objective, novel approaches have been defined to improve the integration of modeling languages, to obtain a suitable interchange of modeling information, and to perform automatic interoperability verification.Giachetti Herrera, GA. (2011). Supporting Automatic Interoperability in Model-Driven Development Processes [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/11108Palanci

Applying ISO 9126 metrics to MDD projects

The Model Driven Development (MDD) paradigm uses conceptual models to automatically generate software products by means of model transformations. This paradigm is strongly positioned in industry due to the quickly time to market of software products. Nevertheless, quality evaluation of software products is needed in order to obtain suitable products. Currently, there are several quality models to be applied in software products but they are not specific for conceptual models used in MDD projects. For this reason, it is important to propose a set of metrics to ensure the quality of models used in MDD approaches in order to avoid error propagation and the high cost of correction of final software applications. This paper analyzes the characteristics and sub-characteristics defined in the ISO/IEC 9126 quality model in order to reveal their applicability to MDD conceptual models.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

Protocol for a Systematic Literature Review on Design Decisions for UML-based DSMLs

Series: Technical Reports / Institute for Information Systems and New Medi

An Initial Maturity Model for Information Governance

This report details the maturity model for information governance which will be used to assess the E-ARK Project use cases. The method that guides the application of this maturity model will then be detailed in deliverable 7.5, A Maturity Model consists of a number of entities, including “maturity levels” (often six) which are, from the lowest to the highest, (0) Non Existent, (1) Initial, (2) Basic, (3) Intermediate, (4) Advanced and (5) Optimizing. Each process can have its own Maturity Model, which expresses quantitatively the maturity level of an organization regarding a certain process. A Maturity Model provides also a way for organizations to see clearly what they must accomplish in order to pass to the next maturity level. The use of maturity models is wide spread and accepted, both in industry and academia. There are numerous maturity models, at least one for each of the most trending topics in such areas as Information Technology or Information Systems. Maturity Models are widely used and accepted because of their simplicity and effectiveness. They can easily help understanding the current level of maturity of a certain aspect in a meaningful way, so that stakeholders can clearly identify strengths and weaknesses requiring improvement, and thus prioritise what must be done in order to reach a higher level. This can be used to show the outcomes that will result from that effort, enabling stakeholders to decide if the outcomes justify the effort