Anna Perini

From Laws to Requirements

Legal prescriptions are increasingly impacting on information systems and on organisations that must comply with them in order to avoid to be prosecuted or fined. Addressing law compliance in early phases of the requirements analysis helps in improving the alignment of information systems with the law. In this paper, we point out ontological differences between legal concepts and requirements and set the basis for a systematic process able to support decision making about requirements for law compliant systems.

Automating model transformations in agent-oriented modelling

Current Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies adopt a model-based approach for analysis and design, but, in order to become of practical use, they should include it in a clear and customizable software development process and provide CASE tools that support it. In this regards, the Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) initiative of OMG is providing useful concepts and techniques. The MDA ultimate objective is that of improving quality and software maintainability by allowing for the reuse of models and mappings between models. It offers standards and techniques for model interoperability and for automating model transformations. Our goal in this paper is to address the role of model transformations in AOSE by discussing a practical example, with reference to the Tropos methodology. In particular, we will focus on the automatic transformation of a Tropos plan decomposition into a UML 2.0 activity diagram. We will show how to use the transformation technique to automate model mappings and describe how a CASE tool, based on a modular architecture, has been extended to automate models transformations.

A Goal-Oriented Approach for Modelling Self-organising MAS

Autonomous software agents provide a promising solution to the needs of decentralised networked systems, able to adapt their behaviour in a complex and dynamically changing environment. n nCurrent agent-oriented software engineering methodologies tend to focus on different levels to realise such a self-adapting behaviour, namely the agent individual level and the global system level. The first requires to design a goal-directed agent behaviour, the second to design agents able to optimize their coordination with other peer agents in the organization, giving rise to system-level adaptation. n nIn this paper we propose to extend a goal-oriented engineering methodology to deal with the modelling of organisations that are able to self-organise in order to reach their goals in a changing environment. To deliver on this aim, we combine Tropos4AS , an extension of TROPOS for adaptive systems, with concepts, guidelines and modelling steps from the ADELFE methodology, which provides a bottom-up approach for engineering collaborative multi-agent societies with an emergent behaviour. n nThe resulting MAS has self-adaptation properties, having agents that are able to change their behaviour according to changes in the environment, and having organisations that adapt themselves to changing needs. The approach is illustrated by modelling a collaborative multi-agent system for conference management.

From Stakeholder Needs to Service Requirements

Web services offer a novel open, distributed computing environment. Within that environment, web services need to be discovered and composed in order to meet user needs (or, goals). For example, a user goal may be plan a holiday. To fulfill this goal, several services need to be discovered from different directories, such as book hotel, book flight, rent car and pay by credit card. These then need to be composed into a plan (process). In this work, we adopt and extend an agent-oriented software design methodology (Tropos) and tailor it to the design of web services. We also sketch how Tropos design-time models can support service discovery and composition by offering a roadmap that relates stakeholder goals to collections of services available in different directories. A case study from the literature is used throughout.

Agent-Oriented Modeling by Interleaving Formal and Informal Specification

The goal of this paper is to discuss possibilities of inter-mixing formal and informal specification in order to guide and support the conceptual modeling process in software development. We sketch a framework based on an agent-oriented methodology that provides a modeling language which allows for the definition of both informal and formal specification. We show how formal techniques can be used to guide and support the analyst while building and refining a conceptual model. Examples of its applications are discussed, with reference to the decision making process undertaken by the analyst when performing a set of activities relevant for requirements engineering, such as requirements elicitation and refinement, user validation of requirements specification, or management of requirements evolution. A case study taken from a technology transfer project in the agricultural domain is used to illustrate the approach.

Graph Rewriting for Agent Oriented Visual Modeling

In this paper we will describe our approach, based on Graph Rewriting (GR), to support the visual modeling process in Tropos, an Agent Oriented software engineering methodology. We will give examples of the rewriting rules which specify the syntax of Tropos and will discuss how this graph rewriting rule-set can support an analyst in building correct models (that is models consistent with the Tropos language). Moreover we will consider how GR permits to adopt modeling language variants in a flexible way and to support an incremental modeling process.