14329219
Incorporating Goal Analysis in Database Design: A Case Study from Biological Data Management
We present a case study of a real-world industrial application which produced several versions of conceptual schema design for a biological database during its evolution. We apply the techniques of early requirements analysis to produce a goal model of the problem domain. We then show that by incorporating goal analysis in the design process we can account for the original schemas by tracing them back to stakeholder goals. Moreover, the goal-oriented analysis supports the systematic examination of the space of design alternatives, and better explains what the output of the design process (a conceptual schema) really means. Our results advocate the need for an extended design methodology for databases driven by stakeholder goals
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.
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.
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.
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
14110385
Applying Tropos Methodology to a real case study: Complexity and Criticality Analysis
Currently in Requirements Engineering the attention is being focused more and more on the understanding of a problem by studying the existing organizational setting in which the system will operate. In this paper we present the application of the Tropos early requirements analysis to a real case study, the Ice Co. We introduce a new type of analysis for actor diagrams based on two different parameters, complexity and criticality, and we show the results we obtained during the case study.
2515059
Modeling security requirements through ownership, permission and delegation
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. Methodologies in this field are challenging, as they must take into account subtle notions such as trust (or lack thereof), delegation, and permission; they must also model entire organizations and not only systems-to-be. In our previous work we introduced Secure Tropos, a formal framework for modeling and analyzing security requirements. Secure Tropos is founded on three main notions: ownership, trust, and delegation. In this paper, we refine Secure Tropos introducing the notions of at-least delegation and trust of execution; also, at-most delegation and trust of permission. We also propose monitoring as a security design pattern intended to overcome the problem of lack of trust between actors. The paper presents a semantic for these notions, and describes an implemented formal reasoning tool based on Datalog.
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.
31072695
Making XML document markup international
In name and in practice, the World-Wide Web (hereafter Web) is used around the World beyond English-speaking areas. This creates a tremendous need to internationalize standard terminology used in the technologies that make the Web possible. Existing efforts on XML internationalization (i18n) and localization (i10n) have focused on the content of XML documents instead of the terms used in markup (annotations) such as elements and attributes. The SGML standard ISO 8879 supports the use of Unicode (ISO 10646) throughout a document, including markups. However, most elements and attributes of XML documents are still defined in English, thereby limiting their use among non-English speakers. This paper presents an XSLT-based method that can completely localize the markup of XML documents into different natural languages. We also describe how the proposed technique can be applied to translation problems in programming (e.g. C and Java) or documentation (e.g. LATEX or other formatting languages) so that a program or a document can be converted to and from an XML format.
393516
Filling the Gap between Requirements Engineering and Public Key/Trust Management Infrastructures
The last years have seen a major interest in designing and deploying trust management and public key infrastructures. Yet, it is still far from clear how one can pass from the organization and system requirements to the actual credentials and attribution of permissions in the PKI infrastructure. Our goal in this paper is filling this gap. We propose a formal framework for modeling and analyzing security and trust requirements, that extends the Tropos methodology for early requirements modeling. The key intuition that underlies our work is the identification of distinct roles for actors that manipulate resources, accomplish goals or execute tasks, and actors that own or permit usage of resources or goals. The paper also presents a simple case study and a PKI/trust management implementation.