Naoufel Kraiem

From intentions to software design using an intentional software product line meta-model

Software Product Line Engineering is a paradigm to develop software which allows the reducing of development costs for each individual product. In this kind of engineering, a family of related products is built out of a common set of core assets. The common characteristics and differences between products are managed in a systematic way. These differences are called variabilities. The variations analysis and the impact of the choices made for a required product are the reason of the main effort to design a product from the product line. In this paper, we try to argue that it is difficult to fully benefit of the SPL if it remains at the software level. The paper proposes a move towards a description of software product line in intentional terms, i.e. intentions and strategies to achieve business goals. We present ISPL, the model to describe intentional Software Product Line. We try through this Meta-models to present the different concepts which we will use in our approach. Thereafter, we propose our process to show how to use this model. This process combines the use of maps, visual techniques for the modeling of product lines, specially features diagrams and Meta-models.

Comprehensive classification of collaboration approaches in E-learning

Abstract There are a number of approaches to learning such as traditional approaches (teacher-centered) and collaborative approaches (learner-centered). Nowadays, the concepts of collaboration and social interactions are the major trends in education. Therefore, many researchers embrace these concepts to offer the educational field enhanced learning environments which are supported by communication and collaboration techniques. The adaptation causes the existence of varied approaches which are addressing the collaborative learning techniques. As a result, there is a need for a mechanism to study those approaches and highlight their eminence. The aim of this paper is to give a comprehensive overview about the state-of-art in collaborative learning, especially by integrating social media tools. To do so, the study adopts a classification framework based on four different views (subject, purpose, method, and tool). The framework has been used to compare ten collaborative e-learning approaches. The finding indicates the potential of all approaches in developing an online learning environment for remote collaborative learning despite the lack of fulfilling all the requirements highlighted in the four views.

A multidimensional framework to classify goal-oriented approaches for services

The paper proposes a framework that considers four critical views of service in terms of goal (why), subject (what), method (how) and realization tool (which). Each view presents a set of attributes. The framework is meant to first compare different types of goal-oriented approaches to service development, then highlight issues that need further research, and finally to propose a consolidate goal-oriented approach.

Developing a Collaborative Learning Environment Using Web Services Techniques

Collaborative e-learning has a set of characteristics which requires interaction and negotiation among learners and teachers. It also needs support to achieve high-level requirements for learning content and systems such as accessibility, reusability, interoperability and adaptability. The focus of this paper is to investigate three commonly used standards in e-learning which are: SCORM, IMS-LD, IEEE and LOM to enhance the characteristics of collaborative e-learning in relation to the features of these standards. Due the lack of collaboration features in these standards, this paper highlights Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) features to fulfill the collaborative e-learning requirements.

Towards of service-oriented design architecture method

This works proposes a method for developing Service-as-a Software (SaaS) in high level design based on functional requirements and quality attributes. The method is guided by a framework.

Approach for Managing Variability in Database Schema

The variability in software product lines is well studied, but this study is well neglected at the level of the databases. This insufficiency drives us to work on the modelling and the implementation of the variability in the databases in SPLs. Therefore, our contribution is proposing an approach to manage variability in database schemas. In this approach, we will focus primarily on modelling variability in the conceptual databases schemas at the domain engineering level. We will use model-driven engineering to ensure the different data models transformation to obtain a variable database model. Then, we will deal with application engineering by managing variability at the logical database schema through a configuration to obtain a variable relational database schema. Moreover, we proposed extensions for a metamodel to support the variability notions proposed. We also offer a tool support to apply and automate our approach and to test case studies.

A scheme for extracting information from collaborative social interaction tools for personalized educational environments

Personalized e-learning systems are mainly structured based on two basic models: domain model and user model. When considering personalization in a collaborative environment with user-generated content via Web 2.0 technologies, the task of generating the models is very challenging. This paper presents an approach to extract information related to the domain model and user model for the purpose of personalization. The extraction is using chat conversations using different social media tools during collaborative learning as sources for the text analysis. Text mining technique has been incorporated to clean the collected data and extract the required information.

A proposal for a variability management framework

Although the database schemas are an integral part of information systems, the use of software product lines has been mainly studied for the production of executable code. The impact on data management and in particular the database schemas are poorly documented and little studied in the literature. The paper is an attempt to explore some of the issues of the modeling and implementation of the variability in the database through the use of disciplined approaches. We propose a variability management framework. Motivations for developing the framework are three-fold: (a) to facilitate the comprehension of the discipline, (b) to classify and compare existing approaches to managing this discipline and (c) to extract their insufficiencies to propose an approach that remedies these insufficiencies and resolve problems related to this discipline. Finally, we introduce seven different variability management approaches and their instantiation according to the variability management framework.

Managing variability in database context using an MDE approach

In the software engineering field, especially in software product line engineering, the problem of managing the variability within databases is relevant. Therefore, in this paper, we have tried to manage the complexity of modeling variables databases schemas and implement an automatic method of generating this type of schema, and then test it on two cases of studies. To carry out this task we decided to start managing the variability from the more abstract model (metamodel) to coding. Hence the choice to work with model driven engineering MDE approach of Object Management Group OMG: Model driven architecture MDA, since our work is based on modeling and meta-modeling by UML. Indeed, we succeeded, in the end, to manage automatically the variability criterion within the database schema via parameter tables that contain optional features of the main tables of the database schema.

A method engineering perspective for service-oriented system engineering

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the method engineering perspective for service-oriented system engineering (SOSE). A number of SOSE methods have been proposed in both academia and industry. Given this, many intuitive, common questions arise. To answer these questions, many comparison frameworks have been developed. Each of which has considered certain methodological perspectives. However, less attention has been given to the method engineering (ME) perspective. The authors argue that this perspective would answer the question “what ME to apply in order to produce SOSE methods that themselves produce quality services at different levels of abstraction and SBAs”. This research question is further decomposed into other questions; the main one is “whether the existing ME do apply to service orientation”. Answering such a question would lead to either developing SOSE methods by using the existing ME or developing a new ME or framework for the specifics of SOSE. Design/methodology/approach – ...