Object Oriented Role Modeling and Group Support Systems

The design and development of Group Support Systems (GSS) is a complex endeavor. The long term usefulness of these systems can only be as good as their design. Sound design principles demand the adoption of a systematic methodology that matches the system design objectives. The focus of this paper is the use of Object-Orientation as a modeling technology for designing GSSs. We present a brief overview of popular Object-Oriented (OO) analysis and design methodologies, and argue in favor of a methodology that allows the description of phenomenon of interest in the form of role models [10] -an abstraction well suited to capturing the essence of collaborative wor

A Foundation for the Concept of Role in Object Modelling

Standardization experts in object modelling are having difficulties with defining the concept of rol

Reflective Composition: the declarative composition of roles to unify objects, roles, and aspects [poster session]

As bases for object-orientation, both class-based and prototype-based organization have limitations. We argue that roles have significant benefits as a foundation for organizing objects. We further argue that these benefits can be realised most flexibly using logic meta-programming. Additional benefits from this approach are to reduce redundancy and subsume aspects

Aspect-oriented design model.

Designing crosscutting concerns (aspects) is a challenging task. Since crosscutting concerns were not addressed while developing contemporary software design techniques, so they lack support for accommodating representation of such concerns along with base program. Some design languages like UML have been extended to express aspects and their elements but they do not fully represent aspects. Some lack adequate representation of aspect elements and some lack an efficient and reusable composition technique. In this paper, some of the aspect-oriented design techniques have been critically discussed. A proposed aspect model has been discussed which helps in overcoming the deficiencies in the contemporary aspect-oriented design techniques. This model represents aspects and their elements throughout the software development life cycle

Towards Interaction Protocol Operations for Large Multi-agent Systems

It is widely accepted that role-based modelling is quite adequate in the context of multi-agent systems (MAS) modelling techniques. Unfortunately, very little work has been reported on how to describe the relationships between several role models. Furthermore, many authors agree on that protocols need to be encapsulated into high-level abstractions. The synthesis of role models is an operation presented in the OORAM methodology that allows us to build new role models from others in order to represent the interrelations they have. To the best of our knowledge this operation has to be performed manually at protocol level and works with protocols expressed by means of messages. In this paper, we present two algorithms to extract the protocol of a role from the protocol of a role model and vice versa that automate the synthesis or role models at the protocol level. Furthermore, in order to deal with protocol descriptions in a top down approach both operations work with protocols expressed by means of an abstraction call multi-role interaction (mRI)

Systemic classification of concern-based design methods in the context of enterprise architecture

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a relatively new domain that is rapidly developing. "The primary reason for developing EA is to support business by providing the fundamental technology and process structure for an IT strategy” [TOGAF]. EA models have to model enterprises facets that span from marketing to IT. As a result, EA models tend to become large. Large EA models create a problem for model management. Concern-based design methods (CBDMs) aim to solve this problem by considering EA models as a composition of smaller, manageable parts—concerns. There are dozens of different CBDMs that can be used in the context of EA: from very generic methods to specific methods for business modeling or IT implementations. This variety of methods can cause two problems for those who develop and use innovative CBDMs in the field of Enterprise Architecture (EA). The first problem is to choose specific CBDMs that can be used in a given EA methodology: this is a problem for researchers who develop their own EA methodology. The second problem is to find similar methods (with the same problem domain or with similar frameworks) in order to make a comparative analysis with these methods: this is a problem of researchers who develop their own CBDMs related to a specific problem domain in EA (such as business process modeling or aspect oriented programming). We aim to address both of these problems by means of a definition of generic Requirements for CBDMs based on the system inquiry. We use these requirements to classify twenty CBDMs in the context of EA. We conclude with a short discussion about trends that we have observed in the field of concern-based design and modelin

A Synthesis of Business Role Models

Modern Information and Communication Technology open a door for innovations that can improve the functioning of companies. Many innovations can come from the analysis of business processes. Today modeling is widely used for the analysis of business processes. In these work we propose a process modeling technique based on role modeling. To specify a process where one business object may play several roles, a synthesis operation (the composition of two base roles in a third role) has to be specified. All role-based techniques have difficulties specifying role synthesis: synthesis is never specified without the description of actual messages passing between business roles. Such implementation details complicate the understanding of the model and semantics of synthesis become implicit. To specify a business process of a complex system at a higher level of abstraction requires the proper understanding of relationships between roles, when they are put together in one common context. In this paper we define the concept of synthesis constraints that shows relations between roles. Using synthesis constraints allows a business modeler to make explicit his decisions about how the synthesis is done in an abstract and implementation independent way. This approach can be used for building a BPR case tool that enables the discovery of new business processes by means of different disassembling and assembling of roles

The Role of ¨Roles¨ in Use Case Diagrams

Use cases are the modeling technique of UML for formalizing the functional requirements placed on systems. This technique has limitations in modeling the context of a system, in relating systems involved in a same business process, in reusing use cases, and in specifying various constraints such as execution constraints between use case occurrences. These limitations can be overcome to some extent by the realization of multiple diagrams of various types, but with unclear relationships between them. Thus, the specification activity becomes complex and error prone. In this paper, we show how to overcome the limitations of use cases by making the roles of actors explicit. Interestingly, our contributions not only make UML a more expressive specification language, they also make it simpler to use and more consistent

Incorporating the elements of the mase methodology into agent open

Enterprise-wide, web-based systems can be assisted in their construction by the use of agents and an agent-oriented methodology. As part of an extensive research programme to create such an AO methodology by combining the benefits of method engineering and existing object-oriented frameworks (notably the OPF), we have analysed here contributions to the OPF repository of process components from the MASE agent-oriented methodology, identifying three new Tasks, one additional Technique and two new Work Products