Roxana Silvia Giandini

Dependency Relations between Models in the Unified Process

The goal of the Unified Process is to guide developers in efficiently implementing and deploying systems that meet customer needs. During the Unified Process, a variety of models of the system are developed. All these models are not independent, they are related to each other. Elements in one model have trace dependencies to other models: they are semantically overlapping and together represent the system as a whole. It is necessary to have a precise definition of the syntax and semantics of the different models and their relationships, since the lack of accuracy in their definition can lead to wrong model interpretations and inconsistency between models. We distinguish three different kinds of dependency relations between models and propose a formal description of them. The goal of the proposed formalization is to provide formal foundations for tools that perform intelligent analysis on models expressed in UML assisting software engineers throughout the development process.

PAMPERO: precise assistant for the modeling process in an environment with refinement orientation

Abstraction [2] facilitates the understanding of complex systems by dealing with the major issues before getting involved in the detail. Apart from enabling for complexity management, the inverse of abstraction, refinement, captures the essential relationship between specification and implementation. Refinement relationship makes it possible to understand how each business goal relates to each system requirement and how each requirement relates to each facet of the design and ultimately to each line of the code. Documenting the refinement relationship between these layers allows developers to verify whether the code meets its specification or not, trace the impact of changes in the business goals and execute test assertions written in terms of abstract model’s vocabulary by translating them to the concrete model’s vocabulary.

Business processes refactoring to improve usability in E-commerce applications

Refactoring is a technique that applies step-by-step transformations intended to improve the quality of software while preserving its behavior. It represents an essential activity in today’s software lifecycle and a powerful tool against software decay. Software decay, however, is not only about code becoming legacy, but it is also about systems becoming less usable compared to competitor solutions adopting new designs and new technologies. If we narrow the focus on e-commerce systems, the role of usability becomes essential: higher usability is in fact a requirement to win the market competition and to retain customers from turning to other choices. One reason why an e-commerce application can start suffering from poor usability is because of its business processes (BPs) becoming difficult to access, complicated to execute, and, overall, offering a poor user experience. In this paper we argue that refactoring can be a key solution for this kind of usability issues. In particular, we propose a catalog of refactorings as a means to systematically identify and address lack of usability in the BPs of an e-commerce application, and to seize opportunities for usability improvement. To make the presentation concrete and to provide evidence of the benefits that applying our refactorings can bring, we present a number of examples with reference to well-known e-commerce websites.

A Two-Level Calculus for Composing Hybrid QVT Transformations

The standard for model transformations QVT offers two dialects: Relations Language and Operational Mappings Language. Each one of these dialects can be used in isolation, resulting in purely declarative transformations or purely imperative transformation respectively; alternatively, both dialects can be combined resulting in a hybrid transformation approach. On the other hand, the availability of compositional approaches to produce complex transformations from smaller units is a major concern in the area of model transformations. Compositional approaches for pure QVT transformations are supported by a number of tools; however no composition technique exists that can consistently manage the hybrid approach. Such partial techniques provide suitable answers to most practical needs; but they do not cover the entire composition spectrum. The aim of this article is to describe a technique for composing model transformations embracing both dimensions - declarative and imperative - so that the hybrid approach can be smoothly supported. Additionally, we report the implementation of a software tool supporting such technique and we sketch its validation.

Understanding the teaching-learning environment through Agent SocialMetric

This article describes the creation, development and practical application of a web tool (prototype version) called Agent SocialMetric, whose primary objective is to assist teachers and which is based on concepts linking Social Network Analysis with Intelligent Conversational Agents.

Services conceptualization within SOA/BPM methodology

The SOA/BMP methodology proposes a model for aligning business processes with the services providing the functionality required by them. Within such methodology, the conceptualization of services and their mapping with software components enable to reduce the gap between business processes life cycle and their executable versions. Although the methodology proposes a set of steps, the interactions between such steps still is to be formalized. The use of meta-models is an alternative for such formalization, since they enable to unambiguously define the syntax for the languages used in each step and the transformation rules between them, serving as a previous step towards automatic transformations. This work presents a proposal for integrating a meta-model for services - proposed in a previous work and integrated with BPM; and a meta-model for components - defined by the SCA (Service Component Architecture) standard. The contribution of this paper enables to formalize the interactions between two steps of the SOA/BPM methodology.

Process-Service Interactions Using a SOA-BPM-Based Methodology

Reducing the gap between the definition, modeling and management of business definition, modeling and management of business processes and the realization of the main processes functions through software services requires a methodological approach. Addressing such gap, this paper focuses on the interactions between the activities of a business process and the functionality provided by software services. It presents a meta-model to formally specify such interactions. The proposed meta-model is instantiated through a case study. Lessons learnt through the development of an example were used to define a graphic editor prototype, as an automated tool for managing interactions between business processes and software services. The proposed approach enables the alternative application of top-down and bottom-up analysis techniques for modeling processes and services, and assists developers with an integrated tool for modeling business processes and software services in a seamlessly combined way.

Student Play: A Didactic Tool to Educate in Values

This article describes the creation, development and practical application of a prototype version of a web tool called Student Play, an educational module of Agent SocialMetric, whose main objective is to establish interactive games with students to educate in values, through different conversational interface software agents.

Applying MDA and OMG Robotic Specification for Developing Robotic Systems

Robotics systems have special needs often related with their real-time nature and environmental properties. Often, control and communication paths within the system are tightly coupled to the actual physical configuration of the robot. As a consequence, these robots can only be assembled, configured, and programmed by robot experts. Traditional approaches, based on mainly writing the code without using software engineering techniques, are still used in the development process of these systems. Even when these robotic systems are successfully used, several problems can be identified and it is widely accepted that new approaches should be explored. The contribution of this research consists in delineating guidelines for the construction of robotic software systems, taking advantage of the application of the OMG standard robotic specifications which adhere to the model-driven approach MDA. Thereby the expert knowledge is captured in standard abstract models that can then be reused by other less experienced developers. In addition part of the code is automatically generated, reducing costs and improving quality.

Mejora de la monitorización y ejecución de procesos de negocio con integración y socialización

The business process-oriented approach is an important aspect for organizations and receives great attention from the scientific community. Technological advances for incorporating new computational models distributed and social aspects in the execution of the business process and the tools that support it, have not kept pace with growth in providing tools to automate process management of business. The review of modern technological aspects in BPM - distribution processes and activities including social aspects related to execution - contributes to improve the results of business process deployment, execution and monitoring stages. This paper proposes a requirements specification for a prototype process management tool that incorporates aspects of distributed software to enrich execution traces and incorporate social features to its management.