9930693
Agent Oriented Software Development
The Tropos project is developing concepts, tools and techniques for building agent-oriented software. This paper presents a quick overview of the project and then focuses on a specific problem: the identification of architectural styles for multi-agent systems (MAS). The proposed styles have been adopted from the literature on organization theory and strategic alliances. The styles are represented in i*, a framework designed to model social and intentional concepts. Each proposed style is evaluated with respect to a set of agent software qualities, such as predictability, adaptability and availability. The use of the styles is illustrated and contrasted with a software architecture for mobile robot reported in the literature.
661878
Text Mining Through Semi Automatic Semantic Annotation
The Web is the greatest information source in human history. Unfortunately, mining knowledge out of this source is a laborious and error-prone task. Many researchers believe that a solution to the problem can be founded on semantic annotations that need to be inserted in web-based documents and guide information extraction and knowledge mining. In this paper, we further elaborate a tool-supported process for semantic annotation of documents based on techniques and technologies traditionally used in software analysis and reverse engineering for large-scale legacy code bases. The outcomes of the paper include an experimental evaluation framework and empirical results based on two case studies adopted from the Tourism sector. The conclusions suggest that our approach can facilitate the semi-automatic annotation of large document bases.
2428324
ST-tool: a CASE tool for security requirements engineering
Security requirements engineering is emerging as a branch of software engineering, spurred by the realization that security must be dealt with early on during the requirements phase. We propose ST-tool, a CASE tool developed for modeling and analyzing functional and security requirements.
6610874
Detecting Conflicts of Interest
System vulnerabilities are often caused by the presence of conflicts within the organization where the system-to-be would eventually operate. In particular, conflicts of interest are very harmful since actors can exploit their positions/roles relative to the system for gaining personal advantage. Capturing and resolving such conflicts is a necessary condition for developing secure information systems. In this paper, we show how conflicts of interest can be formally detected during requirements analysis. This allows system designers to investigate the causes for which conflicts may occur in an organization. Thereby, they can better understand the organizational structure and so provide appropriate countermeasures to resolve or at least mitigate them
45301228
Agent-Oriented Software Development
The Tropos project is developing concepts, tools and techniques for building agent-oriented software. This paper presents a quick overview of the project and then focuses on a specific problem: the identification of architectural styles for multi-agent systems (MAS). The proposed styles have been adopted from the literature on organization theory and strategic alliances. The styles are represented in i*, a framework designed to model social and intentional concepts. Each proposed style is evaluated with respect to a set of agent software qualities, such as predictability, adaptability and availability. The use of the styles is illustrated and contrasted with a software architecture for mobile robot reported in the literature.
14238197
Data Semantics Revisited
The problem of data semantics is establishing and maintaining the correspondence between a data source and its intended subject matter. We review the long history of the problem in Databases, and contrast it with recent research on the Semantic Web. We then propose two new directions for research on the problem and sketch some open research questions.
38499377
The Tropos Software Development Methodology: Processes, Models and Diagrams
Tropos is a novel agent-oriented software development methodology founded on two key features: (i) the notions of agent, goal, plan and various other knowledge level concepts are fundamental primitives used uniformly throughout the software development process; and (ii) a crucial role is assigned to requirements analysis and specification when the system-to-be is analyzed with respect to its intended environment. This paper describes the basic concepts on which Tropos is founded and the types of models one builds out of them. We also specify the analysis process through which design flows from external to system actors through a goal analysis and delegation. In addition, we provide an abstract syntax for Tropos diagrams and other linguistic constructs.
35113903
Using semantic networks for data base management
This paper presents a semantic model of data bases. The model assumes the availability of a semantic network storing knowledge about a data base and a set of attributes for the data base. The use of the semantic net in generating a relational schema for the data base, in defining a set of semantic operators and in maintaining the data base consistent is then demonstrated.
5771700
Information services for the Web: building and maintaining domain models
The World Wide Web is serving as a leading vehicle for information dissemination by offering information services, such as product information, group interactions, or sales transactions. Three major factors affect the performance and reliability of information services for the Web: the distribution of information which has resulted from the globalization of information systems, the heterogeneity of information sources, and the sources' instability caused by their autonomous evolution. This paper focuses on integrating existing information sources, available via the Web, in the delivery of information services. The primary objective of the paper is to provide mechanisms for structuring and maintaining a domain model for Web applications. These mechanisms are based on conceptual modeling techniques, where concepts are being defined and refined within a meta-data repository through the use of instantiation, generalization and attribution. Also, active databases techniques are exploited to provide robust mechanisms for maintaining a consistent domain model in a rapidly evolving environment, such as the Web.
12169882
Capturing more world knowledge in the requirements specification
The view is adopted that software requirements involve the representation (modeling) of considerable real-world knowledge, not just functional specifications. A framework (RMF) for requirements models is presented and its main features are illustrated. RMF allows information about three types of conceptual entities (objects, activities, and assertions) to be recorded uniformly using the notion of properties. By grouping all entities into classes or metaclasses, and by organizing classes into generalization (specialization) hierarchies, RMF supports three abstraction principles (classification, aggregation, and generalization) which appear to be of universal importance in the development and organization of complex descriptions. Finally, by providing a mathematical model underlying our terminology, we achieve both unambiguity and the potential to verify consistency of the model.
3507397
A knowledge level software engineering methodology for agent oriented programming
Our goal in this paper is to introduce and motivate a methodology, called \emph{Tropos}, for building agent oriented software systems. Tropos is based on two key ideas. First, the notion of agent and all the related mentalistic notions (for instance: beliefs, goals, actions and plans) are used in all phases of software development, from the early analysis down to the actual implementation. Second, Tropos covers also the very early phases of requirements analysis, thus allowing for a deeper understanding of the environment where the software must operate, and of the kind of interactions that should occur between software and human agents. The methodology is illustrated with the help of a case study.