Jéssyka Vilela

Applications of ontologies in requirements engineering: a systematic review of the literature

There is an increase use of ontology-driven approaches to support requirements engineering (RE) activities, such as elicitation, analysis, specification, validation and management of requirements. However, the RE community still lacks a comprehensive understanding of how ontologies are used in RE process. Thus, the main objective of this work is to investigate and better understand how ontologies support RE as well as identify to what extent they have been applied to this field. In order to meet our goal, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify the primary studies on the use of ontologies in RE, following a predefined review protocol. We then identified the main RE phases addressed, the requirements modelling styles that have been used in conjunction with ontologies, the types of requirements that have been supported by the use of ontologies and the ontology languages that have been adopted. We also examined the types of contributions reported and looked for evidences of the benefits of ontology-driven RE. In summary, the main findings of this work are: (1) there are empirical evidences of the benefits of using ontologies in RE activities both in industry and academy, specially for reducing ambiguity, inconsistency and incompleteness of requirements; (2) the majority of studies only partially address the RE process; (3) there is a great diversity of RE modelling styles supported by ontologies; (4) most studies addressed only functional requirements; (5) several studies describe the use/development of tools to support different types of ontology-driven RE approaches; (6) about half of the studies followed W3C recommendations on ontology-related languages; and (7) a great variety of RE ontologies were identified; nevertheless, none of them has been broadly adopted by the community. Finally, we conclude this work by showing several promising research opportunities that are quite important and interesting but underexplored in current research and practice.

Integration between requirements engineering and safety analysis

We analyze activities performed in safety analysis and tool support.We present challenges/problems relating to the integration between safety and RE.We present taxonomies about hazard and safety analysis techniques.Hazard and safety-related information are classified in taxonomies.We discuss the benefits of the integration between RE and Safety Engineering. Context: Safety-Critical Systems (SCS) require more sophisticated requirements engineering (RE) approaches as inadequate, incomplete or misunderstood requirements have been recognized as a major cause in many accidents and safety-related catastrophes. Objective: In order to cope with the complexity of specifying SCS by RE, we investigate the approaches proposed to improve the communication or integration between RE and safety engineering in SCS development. We analyze the activities that should be performed by RE during safety analysis, the hazard/safety techniques it could use, the relationships between safety information that it should specify, the tools to support safety analysis as well as integration benefits between these areas. Method: We use a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) as the basis for our work. Results: We developed four taxonomies to help RE during specification of SCS that classify: techniques used in (1) hazard analysis; (2) safety analysis; (3) safety-related information and (4) a detailed set of information regarding hazards specification. Conclusions: This paper is a step towards developing a body of knowledge in safety concerns necessary to RE in the specification of SCS that is derived from a large-scale SLR. We believe the results will benefit both researchers and practitioners.

A Systematic Review on the Use of Ontologies in Requirements Engineering

Requirements Engineering (RE) discipline deals with elicitation, analysis, specification, validation and management of requirements. Several ontology-driven approaches have been proposed to improve these RE activities. However, the requirements engineering community still lacks a comprehensive understanding on how ontologies are used in RE process. The objective of this work is to explore how ontologies are employed in requirements engineering, aiming to identify the main phases addressed, the languages that have been used, the types of existing contributions, as well as the requirements modeling styles have been used and the benefits of using ontology in RE. We conducted a systematic literature review to identify the primary studies on the use of ontologies in RE, following a pre-defined review protocol. Sixty-six papers were selected, covering the five main RE process phases. Moreover, we have identified thirteen ontology-related languages. Furthermore, twenty-six empirical studies have been identified which provided evidence of five group of benefits. The main findings of this review are: (1) there are empirical evidences to state that ontologies benefit RE activities in both academy and industry settings, helping to reduce ambiguity, inconsistency and incompleteness of requirements; (2) the vast majority of papers do not meet all RE phases; (3) nearly half of the papers use W3C recommended languages; (4) the majority of contributions are supported by a tool; and (5) there is a great diversity of requirements modeling styles supported by ontologies.

Deriving the behavior of context-sensitive systems from contextual goal models

Context-sensitive systems are flexible, capable of acting autonomously on behalf of users and to dynamically adapt their behavior. This work proposes a systematic process to derive the behavior of context-sensitive systems from contextual goal models considering the impact of non-functional requirements (NFRs). This process is centered on the incremental refinement of a goal model, obtaining different views of the system (design, contextual, and behavioral). A key contribution of this work is the Behavioral Contextual Design Goal Model, which depicts in a single artefact the operationalization of NFRs, the adaptation and the monitoring tasks.

Specifying Safety Requirements with GORE languages

Context: A suitable representation of Safety-Critical Systems (SCS) requirements is crucial to avoid misunderstandings in safety requirements and issues in safety specification. However, current general requirements specification languages do not fully support the particularities of specifying SCS. Objective: In this paper, our goal is to identify and propose a set of important features that should be provided by requirements languages to support an early safety requirements specification. Moreover, we aim to compare the ability of the four most used Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE) languages (i*, KAOS, GRL, NFR-Framework) in supporting the proposed features. Method: We first established a conceptual foundation and a conceptual model based on the literature, challenges elicited in previous works, and demands of safety standards at the requirements level that practitioners must satisfy in order to certify their systems. Results: We proposed a set of 15 features that requirements languages should provide to an early safety requirements specification. Regarding the comparison of GORE languages, in summary, all surveyed languages lacks explicit modeling constructs to express how hazards can occur in the system, the accidents, their impact and how they can mitigated. Conclusions: The conceptual foundation, conceptual model, and the set of features is a novelty. Finally, the features can be used to propose new requirements languages for SCS or to define extensions for the ones already available.

Core Ontology to Aid the Goal Oriented Specification for Self-Adaptive Systems

[Context] Self-adaptive systems are able to modify their own behavior according to the environment in which they are inserted. Ontology is a set of concepts and relations about a specific domain and can help in the requirements communication. The core ontology for self-adaptive systems does not cover the four groups goal-oriented modeling dimensions for self-adaptive systems (goal, change, mechanism and effects). [Objective] This paper aims to complete the core ontology for self-adaptive systems in order to facilitate the requirements elicitation and specification. [Method] We had performed a comparative study in order to realize the modeling dimensions supported by the goal-oriented approaches for self-adaptive systems. So, we complete the core ontology for self-adaptive systems with the modeling dimensions concepts. [Results] As result, we present some concepts and relationships required when modeling a self-adaptive systems. [Conclusion] We obtained more complete core ontology to assist the requirements elicitation and specification for self-adaptive systems.

A systematic process for obtaining the behavior of context-sensitive systems

BackgroundContext-sensitive systems use contextual information in order to adapt to the user’s current needs or requirements failure. Therefore, they need to dynamically adapt their behavior. It is of paramount importance to specify and analyze the intended behavior of these systems before they are fully implemented. The behavioral specification can be used for requirements validation in order to check if these systems will be able to achieve their goals. Moreover, the reasoning about properties of these systems, such as deadlocks, reachability, completeness and correctness of the system, can be supported. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to have an approach to specify the dynamic behavior of the context-sensitive systems.In this work, we propose the GO2S (GOals to Statecharts) process to systematically derive the behavior of context-sensitive systems, expressed as statecharts, from requirements models, described as goal models.ResultsThe GO2S process addresses the specification of the tasks required for monitoring of requirements satisfaction as well as the system adaptation according to the context, the operationalization of non-functional requirements and prioritization of alternatives to be used at runtime (variants). It is an iterative process centered on the incremental refinement of a goal model, obtaining different views of the system (design, contextual, behavioral). Furthermore, we conducted a controlled experiment to evaluate the statecharts produced following GO2S process (experimental group) in relation to the ones elaborated in ad-hoc fashion (control group).ConclusionsThe experiment results showed that the structural complexity of the statecharts of the experimental group was lower in relation to the control group. Moreover, the average of functionalities whose behavior was modeled according to the specification and the time spent to produce the models of the experimental group were higher in relation to the control group. Besides, the subjects agreed that the GO2S process is easy to use.

An extended systematic mapping study about the scalability of i* Models

i* models have been used for requirements specification in many domains, such as healthcare, telecommunication, and air traffic control. Managing the scalability and the complexity of such models is an important challenge in Requirements Engineering (RE). Scalability is also one of the most intractable issues in the design of visual notations in general: a well-known problem with visual representations is that they do not scale well. This issue has led us to investigate scalability in i* models and its variants by means of a systematic mapping study. This paper is an extended version of a previous paper on the scalability of i* including papers indicated by specialists. Moreover, we also discuss the challenges and open issues regarding scalability of i* models and its variants. A total of 126 papers were analyzed in order to understand: how the RE community perceives scalability; and which proposals have considered this topic. We found that scalability issues are indeed perceived as relevant and that further work is still required, even though many potential solutions have already been proposed. This study can be a starting point for researchers aiming to further advance the treatment of scalability in i* models.

Web tool for Goal modelling and statechart derivation

Creating and maintaining visual models is a time-consuming step in software engineering processes. In order to support the creation of some of these models, we have developed the Goal to Architecture tool (GATO). This web tool handles the creation and edition of goal models, as well as the derivation of statecharts. The particular variation of goal modelling supported by this tool contains four views: requirements view, design view, delegation view, and behavioural view.

Usability and Software Architecture: A Literature Review

In the literature, there are available proposals that aim to contribute to bridge the gap between user interface designers and software engineers. These proposals attempt to produce architectural solutions that successfully address the usability requirements. The objective of this paper is report the planning, execution and the results of a systematic review regarding the works about usability and software architecture. We investigated the definitions, the relationship between these two areas, the impact, problems, methods, tools, reports of success or failure, and finally, the contributions of existing solutions to the academy and the industry. From the 22 selected studies, it was possible to confirm that usability has an impact on software architecture. The methods used to bridge the gap between these areas use mainly patterns, scenarios, and usability evaluation of the architecture. Furthermore, it is possible to conclude that the proposed methods and tools require more empirical evidence.