The GOALS approach: business and software modeling traceability by means of human-computer interaction: enterprise modeling language and method

The management of an enterprise relies on the continuous organization and development of its business and software systems. A process that requires merging the ideas of the enterprise’ systems managers, targeting the specification of business requirements and the conception and implementation of a supporting information system. This process finds obstacles in the identification and communication of requirements, and also in their transformation in software artefacts, leading to difficulties or loss of traceability between business and software models. Existing methods, languages and techniques are still not sufficiently standardized to ensure that when a business improvement is introduced, the supportive software solution will be implemented within budget and time. Methods are still too closed to the concepts of their original scientific domains, conceiving solutions which are not representative of the business and software conceptual relation and of the complexity concealed in an improvement effort, namely concerning usability and user experience. Moreover, the lack of a common modeling language and method for the conception of holistic and traceable software solutions, also refrains the performance of the enterprise development process. The GOALS Approach presents a solution to surpass these barriers by means of the specification of an enterprise modeling language that relates the business and software conceptual structures using a shared set of concepts, a notation, process, method and techniques, that allow the design of the software as a result of the business organization, ensuring traceability by means of the permanent representation of the business structure in the software structure

Exploring Maintainability Assurance Research for Service- and Microservice-Based Systems: Directions and Differences

To ensure sustainable software maintenance and evolution, a diverse set of activities and concepts like metrics, change impact analysis, or antipattern detection can be used. Special maintainability assurance techniques have been proposed for service- and microservice-based systems, but it is difficult to get a comprehensive overview of this publication landscape. We therefore conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to collect and categorize maintainability assurance approaches for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and microservices. Our search strategy led to the selection of 223 primary studies from 2007 to 2018 which we categorized with a threefold taxonomy: a) architectural (SOA, microservices, both), b) methodical (method or contribution of the study), and c) thematic (maintainability assurance subfield). We discuss the distribution among these categories and present different research directions as well as exemplary studies per thematic category. The primary finding of our SLR is that, while very few approaches have been suggested for microservices so far (24 of 223, ?11%), we identified several thematic categories where existing SOA techniques could be adapted for the maintainability assurance of microservices

An enterprise architecture framework for electronic requirements information management

© 2017 Elsevier LtdManaging information about client requirements effectively can contribute to improve the quality of built facilities, and their related services. However, the process has been challenging to construction project management often resulting in failed projects. This necessitates an overwhelming need for a better approach. This paper presents a novel enterprise architecture framework for managing information about client requirements across all phases of a construction project and through-life of a built facility. The Integrated electronic Requirements Information Management Framework (eRIM) defines an information-centric, and process and service-oriented enterprise architecture approach to requirements management. It also describes how Information and Communication Technology (ICT)/Information Systems (IS) can support this information management. In developing the framework, findings from three case study projects were collated through observations, a questionnaire and interviews of construction practitioners. It is concluded that when implemented and incorporated in the management of construction projects, the eRIM architecture framework can potentially contribute towards improved and more efficient and effective management of client requirements across all stages of a project. Further work is outlined to operationalize the framework

SKYWare: The Unavoidable Convergence of Software towards Runnable Knowledge

There Has Been A Growing Awareness Of Deep Relations Between Software And Knowledge. Software, From An Efficiency Oriented Way To Program Computing Machines, Gradually Converged To Human Oriented Runnable Knowledge. Apparently This Has Happened Unintentionally, But Knowledge Is Not Incidental To Software. The Basic Thesis: Runnable Knowledge Is The Essence Of Abstract Software. A Knowledge Distillation Procedure Is Offered As A Constructive Feasibility Proof Of The Thesis. A Formal Basis Is Given For These Notions. Runnable Knowledge Is Substantiated In The Association Of Semantic Structural Models (Like Ontologies) With Formal Behavioral Models (Like Uml Statecharts). Meaning Functions Are Defined For Ontologies In Terms Of Concept Densities. Examples Are Provided To Concretely Clarify The Meaning And Implications Of Knowledge Runnability. The Paper Concludes With The Runnable Knowledge Convergence Point: Skyware, A New Term Designating The Domain In Which Content Meaning Is Completely Independent Of Any Underlying Machine

A Systematic Classification and Analysis of NFRs

The main agenda of Requirements Engineering (RE) is the development of tools, techniques and languages for the elicitation, specification, negotiation, and validation of software requirements. However, this development has traditionally been focused on functional requirements (FRs), rather than non-functional requirements (NFRs). Consequently, NFR approaches developed over the years have been fragmental and there is a lack of clear understanding of the positions of these approaches in the RE process. This paper provides a systematic classification and analysis of 89 NFR approaches

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

User Interface Plasticity: Model Driven Engineering to the Limit!

Keynote paper.International audienceTen years ago, I introduced the notion of user interface plasticity to denote the capacity of user interfaces to adapt, or to be adapted, to the context of use while preserving usability. The Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approach, which was used for user interface generation since the early eighties in HCI, has recently been revived to address this complex problem. Although MDE has resulted in interesting and convincing results for conventional WIMP user interfaces, it has not fully demonstrated its theoretical promises yet. In this paper, we discuss how to push MDE to the limit in order to reconcile high-level modeling techniques with low-level programming in order to go beyond WIMP user interfaces