Your browser does not support JavaScript!
http://iet.metastore.ingenta.com
1887

Using the semantic web to define a language for modelling controlled flexibility in software processes

Using the semantic web to define a language for modelling controlled flexibility in software processes

For access to this article, please select a purchase option:

Buy article PDF
£12.50
(plus tax if applicable)
Add to cart
Buy Knowledge Pack
10 articles for £75.00
(plus taxes if applicable)
Add to cart

IET members benefit from discounts to all IET publications and free access to E&T Magazine. If you are an IET member, log in to your account and the discounts will automatically be applied.

Learn more about IET membership 

Recommend Title Publication to library

You must fill out fields marked with: *

Librarian details
Name:*
Email:*
Your details
Name:*
Email:*
Department:*
Why are you recommending this title?
Select reason:
 
 
 
 
 
IET Software — Recommend this title to your library

Thank you

Your recommendation has been sent to your librarian.

  • Author(s): R. Martinho 1 ; J. Varajão 2 ; D. Domingos 3
    • View affiliations
    • Affiliations: 1: School of Technology and Management, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Leiria, Portugal
      2: Department of Engineering, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal
      3: Department of Informatics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
  • Source: Volume 4, Issue 6, December 2010, p. 396 – 406
    DOI:  10.1049/iet-sen.2010.0045 , Print ISSN 1751-8806, Online ISSN 1751-8814
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Published

Software processes and corresponding models are dynamic entities that must evolve to cope with changes occurred in the enacting process, the software development organisation, the market and the methodologies used to produce software. However, in the everyday practice, software team members do not want total flexibility. They rather prefer to learn about and follow previously defined controlled flexibility, that is, advices on which, where, how and by whom process models and related instances can change/adapt. Process engineers can express these advices within a process model with a domain-specific language (DSL), which complements the core process modelling language with additional controlled flexibility information. Then, software team members can browse and learn on this information in process models and instances, and be guided when performing changes. In this study, the authors propose the use of the semantic web and associated ontology-based technologies to develop and evolve their controlled flexibility DSL for software processes. They use an ontology-based format to define the controlled flexibility-related concepts, descriptions and axioms that specify the formal semantics of their DSL. In addition, the authors provide concrete mappings between these ontology concepts and a unified modelling language class-based DSL metamodel and describe how it supports changes made in the ontology.

Inspec keywords: simulation languages; ontologies (artificial intelligence); semantic Web; software engineering

Other keywords: software processes; domain-specific language; process model; software team members; unified modelling language class-based DSL metamodel; formal semantics; controlled flexibility modelling; core process modelling language; associated ontology-based technologies; software development organisation; semantic Web

Subjects: Knowledge engineering techniques; Software engineering techniques; Information networks

References

    1. 1)
      • OMG: ‘Software & systems process engineering meta-model. Object Management Group’, 2008 v2.0.
    2. 2)
      • E. Gamma , R. Helm , R. Johnson , J.M. Vlissides . (1994) Design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software.
    3. 3)
      • Regev, G., Soffer, P., Schmidt, R.: `Taxonomy of flexibility in business processes', Input Seventh Workshop on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support (BPMDS'06) Co-located with the 18th Conf. on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'06), 2006, http://lamswww.epfl.ch/conference/bpmds06/taxbpflex.
    4. 4)
      • Cass, A.G., Osterweil, L.J.: `Process support to help novices design software faster and better', Proc. 20th IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. on Automated Software Engineering (ASE'05), November 2005, Long Beach, CA, USA, p. 295–299.
    5. 5)
      • Tairas, R., Mernik, M., Gray, J.: `Using ontologies in the domain analysis of domain-specific languages', Proc. First Int. Workshop on Transforming and Weaving Ontologies in Model Driven Engineering, September 2008, Toulouse, France, p. 332–342.
    6. 6)
      • B. Curtis , M.I. Kellner , J. Over . Process modeling. Commun. ACM , 75 - 90
    7. 7)
      • Martinho, R., Varajão, J., Domingos, D.: `A two-step approach for modelling flexibility in software processes', Proc. 23rd IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. on Automated Software Engineering (ASE'2008), September 2008, L'Aquila, Italy, p. 427–430.
    8. 8)
      • Martinho, R., Domingos, D., Varajão, J.: `FlexUML: a uml profile for flexible process modelling', Proc. 19th Int. Conf. on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE'2007), July 2007, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, p. 215–220.
    9. 9)
      • Bider, I.: `Masking flexibility behind rigidity: notes on how much flexibility people are willing to cope with', Proc. 17th Int. Conf. on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'05), June 2005, Porto, Portugal, p. 7–18.
    10. 10)
      • T.R. Gruber . A translation approach to portable ontology specifications. Knowl. Acquis. J. , 2 , 199 - 220
    11. 11)
      • T.R. Gruber . Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud. , 907 - 928
    12. 12)
      • R. Martinho , D. Domingos , J. Varajão . Concept maps for the modelling of controlled flexibility in software processes. IEICE Trans. Inf. Syst. , 8 , 2190 - 2197
    13. 13)
      • R. Martinho , J. Varajão , D. Domingos . Modelling and learning controlled flexibility in software processes. Int. J. Knowl. Learn. , 423 - 442
    14. 14)
      • Parreiras, F.S., Saathoff, C., Walter, T., Franz, T., Staab, S.: `APIs à gogo: automatic generation of ontology APIs', Proc. Third IEEE Int. Conf. on Semantic Computing (ICSC 2009), September 2009, Santa Clara, California, USA, p. 342–348.
    15. 15)
      • Bauer, B., Roser, S.: `Semantic-enabled software engineering and development', INFORMATIK 2006 – Informatik fr Menschen, 2006, p. 293–296, Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI, 94).
    16. 16)
      • Happel, H.J., Seedorf, S.: `Applications of ontologies in software engineering', Proc. Int. Workshop on Semantic Web Enabled Software Engineering (SWESE'06), November 2006, Athens, GA, USA, p. 1–14.
    17. 17)
      • Schonenberg, H., Mans, R., Russell, N., Mulyar, N., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: `Towards a taxonomy of process flexibility (extended version)', BPMcenter.org, 2007.
    18. 18)
      • A. García-Crespo , R. Colomo-Palacios , J.M. Gómez-Berbís , M. Mencke . BMR: benchmarking metrics recommender for personnel issues in software development projects. Int. J. Comput. Intell. Syst. , 3 , 256 - 266
    19. 19)
      • Novak, J.D., Cañas, A.: `The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them', IHMC CmapTools, 2006-01 Rev 2008-01, Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, 2008.
    20. 20)
      • I. Jacobson , G. Booch , J. Rumbaugh . (1999) The unified software development process.
    21. 21)
      • N. Derbentseva , F. Safayeni , A.J. Cañas . Concept maps: experiments on dynamic thinking. J. Res. Sci. Teach. , 448 - 465
    22. 22)
      • S. Kelly , J.P. Tolvanen . (2008) Domain-specific modeling: enabling full code generation.
    23. 23)
    24. 24)
      • D. Oberle . (2006) Semantic management of middleware. Vol. 1 of semantic web and beyond.
    25. 25)
      • F. Safayeni , N. Derbentseva , A. Cañas . A theoretical note on concepts and the need for cyclic concept maps. J. Res. Sci. Teach. , 741 - 766
    26. 26)
      • Walter, T., Parreiras, F.S., Staab, S.: `OntoDSL: An ontology-based framework for domain-specific languages', Proc. 12th ACM/IEEE Int. Conf. on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS'09), October 2009, Denver, Colorado, USA, p. 408–4227.
    27. 27)
      • M.R. Genesereth , N.J. Nilsson . (1987) Logical foundations of artificial intelligence.
    28. 28)
      • Martinho, R., Domingos, D., Varajão, J.: `A flexible perspective for software processes – supporting flexibility in the software process engineering metamodel', Proc. Ninth Int. Conf. on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS'07), May 2007, Madeira, Portugal, p. 559–562.
    29. 29)
      • H.H. Wang , J.S. Dong , J. Sun , J. Sun . Reasoning support for semantic web ontology family languages using alloy. Multiagent Grid Syst. , 4 , 455 - 471
    30. 30)
      • A. García-Crespo , R. Colomo-Palacios , J.M. Gómez-Berbís , B. Ruiz-Mezcua . SEMO: a framework for customer social networks analysis based on semantics. J. Inf. Technol. , 2 , 178 - 188
    31. 31)
      • Y. Zhang , R. Witte , J. Rilling , V. Haarslev . Ontological approach for the semantic recovery of traceability links between software artefacts. IET Softw. , 3 , 185 - 203
    32. 32)
      • R. Conradi , M.L. Jaccheri , J.-C. Derniame , B.A. Kaba , D.G. Wastell . (1999) Process modelling languages, Software process: principles, methodology and technology.
    33. 33)
      • W3C: ‘OWL web ontology language guide – W3C recommendation’. (W3C, MIT, ERCIM, Keio, 2004).
    34. 34)
      • A. García-Crespo , R. Colomo-Palacios , J.M. Gómez-Berbís , F. García-Sánchez . SOLAR: social link advanced recommendation system. Future Gener. Comput. Syst. , 3 , 374 - 380
    35. 35)
      • Borch, S.E., Stefansen, C.: `On controlled flexibility', Proc. Seventh Workshop on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support (BPMDS'06) co-located with the 18th Conf. on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'06), June 2006, Luxembourg, p. 121–126.
    36. 36)
      • A. Trigo , J. Varajão , P. Soto-Acosta , J. Barroso , J. Molina-Castillo , N. Gonzalvez-Gallego . IT professionals: an Iberian snapshot. Int. J. Hum. Capit. Inf. Technol. Prof. (IJHCITP) , 1 , 61 - 75
    37. 37)
      • T. Stahl , M. Völter , S. Efftinge , A. Haase . (2007) Modellgetriebene softwareentwicklung. Techniken, engineering, management.
    38. 38)
      • Bräuer, M., Lochmann, H.: `Towards semantic integration of multiple domain-specific languages using ontological foundations', Proc. Fourth Int. Workshop on Software Language Engineering (ATEM'2007), October 2007, Nashville, Tennessee, USA, p. 28–33.
    39. 39)
      • R.R. Hoffman , D.D. Woods . Studying cognitive systems in context: preface to the special section. J. Hum. Factors Ergon. Soci. , 1 - 7
    40. 40)
      • M. Reichert , S. Rinderle-Ma , P. Dadam . Flexibility in process-aware information systems.
http://iet.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1049/iet-sen.2010.0045
Loading

Related content

content/journals/10.1049/iet-sen.2010.0045
pub_keyword,iet_inspecKeyword,pub_concept
6
6
Loading
Print this page
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address