Requirements engineering-challenges from the agent-oriented approach

Many methodologies have been proposed to systematize the software development process. Many of them have been widely adopted. However, the majority has focused on analysis and design. Requirements have frequently been forgotten or only superficially dealt with. In, fact in the past we have seen methodologies evolving from programming. That happened when structured analysis evolved from structured programming and more recently with Object-oriented analysis evolving from object-oriented programming. (Párrafo extraído del texto a modo de resumen)Facultad de Informátic

Evaluating methodologies: a requirements engineering approach through the use of an exemplar

Systems development methodologies continue to be a central area of research in software engineering. As the nature of applications and systems usage move increasingly towards open networked environments, not only are new methodologies required, but new ways for evaluating methodologies for these new environments are also required. The agent-oriented approach to software engineering introduces concepts such as pro-activeness and autonomy to achieve more flexible and robust systems for complex applications environments. A number of AOSE methodologies have been proposed. In order to evaluate and compare these methods in depth, we proposed the use of a common exemplar-a detailed application setting within which each of the methodologies will be worked out. The evaluation method emphasizes a requirements engineering perspective. In this paper we show how to apply this exemplar to evaluate three agentoriented methodologies.Facultad de Informátic

Assessing composition in modeling approaches

Modeling approaches are based on various paradigms, e.g., aspect-oriented, feature-oriented, object-oriented, and logic-based. Modeling approaches may cover requirements models to low-level design models, are developed for various purposes, use various means of composition, and thus are difficult to compare. However, such comparisons are critical to help practitioners know under which conditions approaches are most applicable, and how they might be successfully generalized and combined to achieve end-to-end methods. This paper reports on work done at the 2nd International Comparing Modeling Approaches (CMA) workshop towards the goal of identifying potential comprehensive modeling methodologies with a particular emphasis on composition: (i) an improved set of comparison criteria; (ii) 19 assessments of modeling approaches based on the comparison criteria and a common, focused case study

Designing for Privacy in a Multi-Agent World

Abstract: In a multi-agent world, privacy may have different meaning and significance for different agents. From a system design viewpoint, a practical approach to privacy should allow for a variety of perceptions and perspectives on privacy. Furthermore, privacy must be considered together with all the other requirements- functionality, usability, performance, costs, security, and so on. While there is a growing body of knowledge about privacy issues and how to address them through technical and non-technical means, systematic frameworks are needed to assist system analysts and designers in identifying, analyzing, and addressing these issues. In a networked, multi-agent environment, privacy concerns arise in the context of complex relationships among many human and automated agents. Each agent could have different viewpoints on what notions of privacy apply, and what mechanisms are appropriate for providing adequate privacy, in light of other competing or synergistic requirements. In this paper, we show how the i* framework can be used to model and reason about privacy requirements and solutions. Agents have privacy goals which are refined, then operationalized into implementable mechanisms, often through dependencies on other agents. To support early-stage design decisions, the impact of alternative solutions are assessed by propagating qualitative evaluations through a dependency network. A example in the health care domain is used to illustrate. 1