M. Mejías

Visualization of Use Cases through Automatically Generated Activity Diagrams

Functional requirements are often written using use cases formatted by textual templates. This textual approach has the advantage to be easy to adopt, but the requirements can then hardly be processed for further purposes like test generation. In this paper, we propose to generate automatically through a model transformation an activity diagram modeling the use case scenario. Such an activity diagram allows us to guess in a glimpse the global behavior of a use case, and can easily be processed. The transformation is defined using the QVT-Relational language, and is illustrated on a case study using a supporting tool.

An overview on test generation from functional requirements

Despite the fact that the test phase is described in the literature as one of the most relevant for quality assurance in software projects, this test phase is not usually developed, among others, with enough resources, time or suitable techniques. To offer solutions which supply the test phase, with appropriate tools for the automation of tests generation, or even, for their self-execution, could become a suitable way to improve this phase and reduce the cost constraints in real projects. This paper focuses on answering a concrete research question: is it possible to generate test cases from functional requirements described in an informal way? For this aim, it presents an overview of a set of relevant approaches that works in this field and offers a set of comparative analysis to determine which the state of the art is.

The treatment of navigation in web engineering

This paper aims at giving a global vision of the most popular web engineering approach. Web systems have woken up a high interest in companies and in the research community in the last years. Thus, techniques and methods are being proposed in order to offer a suitable framework to deal with the special characteristics of the web. For these reasons, some years ago a new line in the software engineering appeared. This line, then named web engineering, has grown in the last years, proving that web systems have special characteristics that require a special treatment. One of the most treated characteristic is the navigation. Navigation is a critical aspect in web systems and its suitable development in the life cycle is a basic need to guarantee the project quality. This survey shows how navigation is treated in 15 web proposals, which are the most referenced ones, and it analyses the available techniques, models and the possible gaps in the treatment.

A quality management based on the Quality Model life cycle

Managing quality is a hard and expensive task that involves the execution and control of processes and techniques. For a good quality management, it is important to know the current state and the objective to be achieved. It is essential to take into account with a Quality Model that specifies the purposes of managing quality. QuEF (Quality Evaluation Framework) is a framework to manage quality in MDWE (Model-driven Web Engineering). This paper suggests managing quality but pointing out the Quality Model life cycle. The purpose is to converge toward a quality continuous improvement by means of reducing effort and time.

An approach to generate test cases from use cases

The system testing allows to verify the behaviour of the systemunder test and to guarantee the satisfaction of its requirements.This work describes a complete process to generate test casesfrom use cases for web applications. This process also resolves the lacks detected in existing approaches.

Open source tools for measuring the Internal Quality of Java software products. A survey

Collecting metrics and indicators to assess objectively the different products resulting during the lifecycle of a software project is a research area that encompasses many different aspects, apart from being highly demanded by companies and software development teams. Focusing on software products, one of the most used methods by development teams for measuring Internal Quality is the static analysis of the source code. This paper works in this line and presents a study of the state-of-the-art open source software tools that automate the collection of these metrics, particularly for developments in Java. These tools have been compared according to certain criteria defined in this study.

Quality evaluation for Model-Driven Web Engineering methodologies

Context: There are lots of approaches or methodologies in the Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) context to develop Web Applications without reaching a consensus on the use of standards and scarcity of both, practical experience and tool support. Objective: Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) methodologies are constantly evolving. Moreover, Quality is a very important factor to identify within a methodology as it defines processes, techniques and artifacts to develop Web Applications. For this reason, when analyzing a methodology, it is not only necessary to evaluate quality, but also to find out how to improve it. The main goal of this paper is to develop a set of Quality Characteristics and Sub-Characteristics for MDWE approaches based on ISO/IEC standards. Method: From the software products context, some widely standards proposed, such as ISO/IEC 9126 or ISO/IEC 25000, suggest a Quality Model for software products, although up to now, there are no standard methods to assess quality on MDWE methodologies. Such methodologies can be organized into Properties, thus, a methodology has artifacts, processes and techniques. Then, each item is evaluated through a set of appropriate Quality Characteristics, depending on its nature. This paper proposes to evaluate a methodology as a product itself. Results: This paper recommends a set of Quality Characteristics and Sub-Characteristics based on these standards in order to evaluate MDWE methodologies quality. Additionally, it defines an agile way to relate these Quality Sub-Characteristics to Properties with the sole purpose of not only analyzing, but also assessing and improving MDWE methodologies. Conclusions: The application of these Quality Characteristics and Sub-Characteristics could promote efficiency in methodologies since this kind of assessment enhances both the understanding of strengths and weaknesses of approaches.

A scrum-based approach to CMMI maturity level 2 in web development environments

Scrum has become one of the most popular agile methodologies, either alone or combined with other agile practices. Besides, CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) is accepted as a suitable model to measure the maturity of the organizations when developing or acquiring software. Although these two approaches are often considered antagonist, the use of an agile approach to reach certain CMMI maturity levels may result beneficial to organizations that develop Web systems, since they would take the advantages of both approaches. In Web community, this union may be very interesting, because agile approaches fits with the special needs of Web development, and they could be a useful tool for companies getting a certain grade of maturity. This work analyzes the goals of CMMI maturity level 2 and the feasibility of achieving them using the practices proposed by Scrum, trying to assess whether the use of this methodology is suitable for meeting the CMMI generic and specific goals or not. Finally, and based on this analysis, this paper raises a possible extension of Scrum, based on agile techniques, to accommodate the CMMI maturity level 2.

NDT-tool: a case tool to deal with requirements in web information systems

Internet progress and the rising interest for developing systems in web environment has given way to several methodological proposals which have been proposed to be a suitable reference in the development process. However, there is a gap in case tool[3][4][6]. This work presents a case tool named NDT-Tool that allows to apply algorithms and techniques proposed in NDT (Navigational Development Techniques) [2], which is a methodological proposition to specify, analyze and design web information systems.

Agile, Web Engineering and Capability Maturity Model Integration

We have analyzed the relation among Web Engineering, Agile and CMMI.We performed this analysis by means of a Systematic Literature Review.We have identified the relevant studies linked to the problem under analysis.We have defined a characterization schema in order to compare the studies.We have extracted relevant conclusions for the different dimensions of the problem.We have identified further lines of research. ContextAgile approaches are an alternative for organizations developing software, particularly for those who develop Web applications. Besides, CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) models are well-established approaches focused on assessing the maturity of an organization that develops software. Web Engineering is the field of Software Engineering responsible for analyzing and studying the specific characteristics of the Web. The suitability of an Agile approach to help organizations reach a certain CMMI maturity level in Web environments will be very interesting, as they will be able to keep the ability to quickly react and adapt to changes as long as their development processes get mature. ObjectiveThis paper responds to whether it is feasible or not, for an organization developing Web systems, to achieve a certain maturity level of the CMMI-DEV model using Agile methods. MethodThe proposal is analyzed by means of a systematic literature review of the relevant approaches in the field, defining a characterization schema in order to compare them to introduce the current state-of-the-art. ResultsThe results achieved after the systematic literature review are presented, analyzed and compared against the defined schema, extracting relevant conclusions for the different dimensions of the problem: compatibility, compliance, experience, maturity and Web. ConclusionIt is concluded that although the definition of an Agile approach to meet the different CMMI maturity levels goals could be possible for an organization developing Web systems, there is still a lack of detailed studies and analysis on the field.