Paolo Giorgini

Tropos: An Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology

Our goal in this paper is to introduce and motivate a methodology, called Tropos,1 for building agent oriented software systems. Tropos is based on two key ideas. First, the notion of agent and all related mentalistic notions (for instance goals and plans) are used in all phases of software development, from 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. The Tropos language for conceptual modeling is formalized in a metamodel described with a set of UML class diagrams.

Agent-oriented methodologies

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SECURE TROPOS: A SECURITY-ORIENTED EXTENSION OF THE TROPOS METHODOLOGY

Although security plays an important role in the development of multiagent systems, a careful analysis of software development processes shows that the definition of security requirements is, usually, considered after the design of the system. One of the reasons is the fact that agent oriented software engineering methodologies have not integrated security concerns throughout their developing stages. The integration of security concerns during the whole range of the development stages can help towards the development of more secure multiagent systems. In this paper we introduce extensions to the Tropos methodology to enable it to model security concerns throughout the whole development process. A description of the new concepts and modelling activities is given along with a discussion on how these concepts and modelling activities are integrated to the current stages of Tropos. A real life case study from the health and social care sector is used to illustrate the approach.

Reasoning with Goal Models

Over the past decade, goal models have been used in Computer Science in order to represent software requirements, business objectives and design qualities. Such models extend traditional AI planning techniques for representing goals by allowing for partially defined and possibly inconsistent goals. This paper presents a formal framework for reasoning with such goal models. In particular, the paper proposes a qualitative and a numerical axiomatization for goal modeling primitives and introduces label propagation algorithms that are shown to be sound and complete with respect to their respective axiomatizations. In addition, the paper reports on preliminary experimental results on the propagation algorithms applied to a goal model for a US car manufacturer.

Conceptual Modeling: Foundations and Applications

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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.

Agent-Oriented Software Engineering IV

Most of the methodologies and notations for agent-oriented software engineering developed over the past few years are based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) or proposed extensions of UML. However, at the moment an overview on the different approaches is missing. In this paper. we present a state-of-the-art survey of the different methodologies and notations that, in one way or the other, rely on the usage of UML for the specification of agent-based systems. We focus on two aspects, i.e., design methodologies for agent-oriented software engineering, and different types of notations (e.g., for interaction protocols, social structures, or ontologies) that rely on UML. 1

GRAnD: A goal-oriented approach to requirement analysis in data warehouses

Several surveys indicate that a significant percentage of data warehouses fail to meet business objectives or are outright failures. One of the reasons for this is that requirement analysis is typically overlooked in real projects. In this paper we propose GRAnD, a goal-oriented approach to requirement analysis for data warehouses based on the Tropos methodology. Two different perspectives are integrated for requirement analysis: organizational modeling, centered on stakeholders, and decisional modeling, focused on decision makers. Our approach can be employed within both a demand-driven and a mixed supply/demand-driven design framework.

Goal-oriented requirement analysis for data warehouse design

Several surveys indicate that a significant percentage of data warehouses fail to meet business objectives or are outright failures. One of the reasons for this is that requirement analysis is typically overlooked in real projects. In this paper we propose a goal-oriented approach to requirement analysis for data warehouses, based on the Tropos methodology. Two different perspectives are integrated for requirement analysis: organizational modeling, centered on stakeholders, and decisional modeling, focused on decision makers. Our approach can be employed within both a demand-driven and a mixed supply/demand-driven design framework: in the second case, while the operational sources are still explored to shape hierarchies, user requirements play a fundamental role in restricting the area of interest for analysis and in choosing facts, dimensions, and measures. The methodology proposed, supported by a prototype, is described with reference to a real case study.

Formal Reasoning Techniques for Goal Models

Over the past decade, goal models have been used in Computer Science in order to represent software requirements, business objectives and design qualities. Such models extend traditional AI planning techniques for representing goals by allowing for partially defined and possibly inconsistent goals. This paper presents a formal framework for reasoning with such goal models. In particular, the paper proposes a qualitative and a numerical axiomatization for goal modeling primitives and introduces label propagation algorithms that are shown to be sound and complete with respect to their respective axiomatizations. In addition, the paper reports on experimental results on the propagation algorithms applied to a goal model for a US car manufacturer.