Pedro Porfírio Muniz Farias

Fuzzy Modeling for Function Points Analysis

Function Point Analysis (FPA) is a largely used technique to estimate the size of development project, enhancement project or applications already installed. During the point counting process that represents the dimension of a project or an application, each function is classified according to its relative functional complexity. Several studies resulted in FPA extensions, and most of them are mainly aimed at achieving greater precision in the point assessment of systems of greater algorithmic complexity. This work proposes the use of concepts and properties from fuzzy set theory to extend FPA into FFPA (Fuzzy Function Point Analysis). Fuzzy theory seeks to build a formal quantitative structure capable of emulating the imprecision of human knowledge. With the function points generated by FFPA, the functionality of the project is better represented than it was through FPA. Thus, derived values such as costs and terms of development can be more precisely determined.

A Fuzzy Model for Function Point Analysis to Development and Enhancement Project Assessments

Function Point Analysis (FPA) is among the most commonly used techniques to estimate the size of software system projects or software systems. During the point counting process that represents the dimension of a project or an application, each function is classified according to its relative functional complexity. Various studies already propose to extend FPA, mainly aimed at achieving greater precision in the point assessment of systems of greater algorithmic complexity. This work proposes the use of concepts and properties from fuzzy set theory to extend FPA to FFPA (Fuzzy Function Point Analysis). Fuzzy theory seeks to build a formal quantitative structure capable of emulating the imprecision of human knowledge. With the function points generated by FFPA, derived values such as costs and terms of development can be more precisely determined.

Conceptual navigation in knowledge management environments using NavCon

This article presents conceptual navigation and NavCon, an architecture that implements this navigation in World Wide Web pages. NavCon architecture makes use of ontology as metadata to contextualize user search for information. Based on ontologies, NavCon automatically inserts conceptual links in Web pages. By using these links, the user may navigate in a graph representing ontology concepts and their relationships. By browsing this graph, it is possible to reach documents associated with the user desired ontology concept. This Web navigation supported by ontology concepts we call conceptual navigation. Conceptual navigation is a technique to browse Web sites within a context. The context filters relevant retrieved information. The context also drives user navigation through paths that meet his needs. A company may implement conceptual navigation to improve user search for information in a knowledge management environment. We suggest that the use of an ontology to conduct navigation in an Intranet may help the user to have a better understanding about the knowledge structure of the company.

An Approach Based on BPMN to Detail Use Cases

Use cases have become an important technique for capturing user requirements in software development projects. Likewise, increasingly adopted the workflow models represent the business processes of a company. Recently the standardization of BPMN v2, by the OMG, has given rise to modeling tools and execution of business processes that enable rapid prototyping applications, integrating the requirements to business. One of the most critical problems of software development is to create solid models and consistent with the company’s business. Thus, this work presents an approach for developing systems based on the detailed use cases in BPMN in order to refine and validate executable prototypes produced during the development.

An Approach to Support Data Integrity for Web Services Using Semantic RESTful Interfaces

In the Web, linked data is growing rapidly due to its potential to facilitate data retrieval and data integration. At the same time, relational database systems store a vast amount of data published on the Web. Current linked data in the Web is mainly read only. It allows for integration, navigation, and consultations in large structured datasets, but it still lacks a general concept for reading and writing. This paper proposes a specification, entitled Semantic Data Services (SDS), for RESTful Web services that provide data access. To provide linked data read-write capacity, SDS proposes a mechanism for integrity checking that is analogous to that used in relational databases. SDS implements the Semantic Restful Interface (SERIN) specification. SERIN uses annotations on classes in an ontology, describing the semantic web services that are available to manipulate data. This work extends SERIN specification adding annotations to allow the adoption of data access integrity constraints.

Semantic data services: An approach to access and manipulate Linked Data

This paper proposes a specification for Semantic Data Services (SDS), i.e., data services built on Semantic Web technologies and aligned to the REST architectural style. SDS is a concrete implementation of the abstract and semantic interfaces of the SERIN specification. To support it, SERIN was extended with the inclusion of annotations for checking integrity constraints, inspired by the relational data model. Providing mechanisms for checking integrity is essential to facilitate data update by software agents adhering to the principles of Linked Data.

Software measure based on BPMN activity points

BPMN usage has been extended beyond the workflow systems and service-oriented architecture. Development methodologies have been proposed using BPMN to describe use cases, to specify the activities flow that forms each scenario of general purpose systems and business process execution with web services. This article proposes a metric to estimate software size, called BPMN Activity Points based on activities counting from three different perspectives, in which these scores are increasingly detailed and refined.

An Agile Approach to Improve Process-Oriented Software Development

This article describes a software development process called AgilePDD, specially focused on workflow systems. This process gives priority for defining the scope of the targeted system use cases, immediate prototyping and continuous delivery of working releases of the system, which are produced by a BPMS tool. To reduce rework, it is proposed to unite BPMN and BPMS with agile practices in a software development process. This paper summarizes two case studies using the AgilePDD, which were assessed in quantitative and qualitative ways. Lessons learned from these experiments show that some UML diagrams can be replaced by BPMN diagrams in the development of systems, without damage the documentation and modeling. Moreover, the stakeholders can get benefits from the possibility of execution of diagrams for process engines.

Semantic Web Services Discovery Adopting SERIN

Service-based architecture (SOA) are extensively adopted in web applications. In this scenario, REST-based web services has become a large adopted standard. The addition of semantics enhances the web services description, which enables automatic agents to discover them and to make calls. However, the existence of many different languages to semantically describe services makes it difficult to discover and to select the service that best attends a requirement. Furthermore, most of these languages does not attend to describe RESTful services, making the discover process even more difficult. This work proposes a RESTful semantic web service discovery architecture based on semantic interfaces (SERIN). SERIN intends to semantically described RESTful web services through an annotated ontology. We present a study showing that is possible to adopt the proposed architecture to implement a semantic service-based application, with minimum development effort, that enables software agents to automatically discover and to make service calls in order to execute a determined task.

Towards a Distinction between Application State Resources and Data Resources in ROA

In the context of ROA (Resource Oriented Architecture), this paper proposes a distinction between two REST (Representational State Transfer) resources types: The Data Resources (DR) and the Application State Resources (ASR). DR are representations of the application data, at the persistence layer, or remote functions that can be reused in several applications. The ASR represents RESTful application states. An ASR has to follow the HATEOAS(Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State) principle by including links to the next possible application states. The proposed distinction between ASR and DR can be seen as an alternative approach to the distinction between pure RESTful Web services and Web APIs. Furthermore, this paper models the ASR transitions using BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation). The BPMN workflow can properly represent the application states.