T4 : Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering With Scenarios
Date: Tuesday, April 1, 2008 (morning)
Presenters: Gunter Mussbacher, Joao Araujo, Ana Moreira, Jon Whittle
Level: Intermediate
Prerequisites: Participants are assumed to have some general experience in scenario-based system modeling and general knowledge of software and requirements engineering. Knowledge of aspect-oriented requirements engineering is not necessary as we will introduce the essential concepts in the area.
Abstract
Requirements that cut across other requirements may result in tangled representations. This makes changing requirements more difficult as the impact of changes is more complicated and costly to manage. A means of modeling crosscutting concerns (aspects) at the requirements stage independently and also a means of composing aspects with other requirements in a way that will allow the entire set of requirements to be validated are necessary to cope with inevitably changing requirements. In this tutorial, we consider aspects at the requirements level, concentrating on scenario-based requirements. We present in detail two techniques for specifying and composing aspect-oriented scenarios: Modeling Aspects Using a Transformational Approach (MATA) and Aspect-oriented Use Case Maps (AoUCM).
Among other applications, we can use scenario-based aspect-oriented requirements engineering (SBAORE) to model volatile requirements. A rapidly changing market leads to software systems with highly volatile requirements. These must be managed in a way that reduces the time and costs associated with updating a system to meet these new requirements. By externalizing such volatile concerns with aspect-oriented techniques, we can build a stepping-stone for future management of unanticipated requirements change.
At the end of the tutorial, participants will understand
- the usefulness of SBAORE for addressing crosscutting requirements to improve modularity and evolvability of RE models;
- how to use general good practice guidelines and MATA and AoUCM to identify, modularize, and compose aspects in scenario-based requirements;
- how to identify and deal with volatile requirements using SBAORE; and
- a set of composition techniques for SBAORE.
Biographies
Dr. João Araújo holds a PhD in Computer Science from Lancaster University, UK, in the area of Requirements Engineering. Currently, his main research interest is in aspect-oriented requirements engineering. He has been a co-organizer of Early Aspects workshops since 2002. Additionally, he has served on the organization committees as Tutorials and Publicity Chair of ACM/IEEE MoDELS conferences. Also, he organized a panel on AOSD and Model-Driven Development at MoDELS’07. Currently, he is a Co-Publicity chair of the 16th IEEE Requirements Engineering Conference and a guest editor of the Special Issue on Early Aspects at the Transaction on AOSD journal.
Dr. Ana Moreira is an Associate Professor in the Computing Science Department at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. Her main research areas are aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture with a current focus on aspect-orientation and Software Product Lines. She serves on the editorial board of the TAOSD and "Software and Systems Modeling" journals. She has been involved, both as organiser and programme committee member, in several conferences, such as ECOOP, CAiSE, UML, and is currently on the MODELS and AOSD Steering Committees and the AOSD 2009 Program Committee Chair. She has co-organised the various editions of the Early Aspects workshop.
Gunter Mussbacher received a M.Sc. in the area of requirements engineering from Simon Fraser University, Canada, where he has also taught software engineering courses. While working as a research engineer for Mitel Networks, he applied and taught URN concepts and participated in the URN standardization effort of ITU-T (the first standardization effort combining goal-oriented and scenario-based requirements in one language). He has taught URN tutorials at several conferences and is a co-organizer for the Early Aspects Workshop at AOSD 2008. For his PhD studies at the University of Ottawa, he is focusing on aspect-oriented requirements engineering, patterns, and URN.
Dr. Jon Whittle is a Professor of Software Engineering at Lancaster University, UK. He is holder of a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award. He serves on the Editorial Board of the "Software and Systems Modeling" journal and is Steering Committee Chair of MODELS. He has received the IEE Proceedings Software Premium Award and Best Paper awards at the World Congress on Software Quality 2005 and the Use Case Modeling Workshop at MODELS 2005. He was UML2003 Conference Chair and UML2002 Tutorials/Workshops Chair. He has also co-organised several workshops at conferences such as ICSE, MODELS, UML, ETAPS, ECOOP, and OOPSLA.