A Framework to Support Non-Functional Requirements Knowledge Reuse

支持非功能性需求知识重用的框架

• 批准号: RGPIN-2018-05833
• 负责人: Cysneiros, LuizMarcio
• 金额: $ 1.68万
• 依托单位: York University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=757247
• 关键词: Framework; Support; Non; Functional; Requirements

Requirements engineers have to address both functional and non-functional requirements (NFR) to develop software systems. Functional requirements are responsible for representing what the system is capable of in terms of available features, while non-functional requirements are known to represent quality attributes. Some common NFRs include privacy, performance, usability, availability and other similar aspects related to the quality of a software system. The proposed research aims at providing an environment that will facilitate a software development process that will favor the reuse of knowledge on satisficing NFRs associated with functional requirements.The first challenge for eliciting NFRs lies on the fact that they are fuzzy in nature and are often missed by both software engineers and stakeholders. Furthermore, choosing one solution to implement one NFR might bring synergies and, perhaps most important, conflicts to other NFRs.Some works have proposed the use of catalogues for capturing knowledge on alternatives to achieve an NFR as a way of helping not only to elicit NFRs but also to reason about the complexity involved in choosing among alternatives. These catalogues are implemented using Softgoal Interdependency Graphs (SIG). SIGs catalogues promote a graphical representation of essential quality characteristics for satisficing a given non-functional requirement. In fact, empirical works have suggested that the use of catalogues can contribute to avoiding omissions and missed conflicts, despite the fact that SIGs do not scale too well.I have recently proposed to use an ontology for NFR supported by semantic web techniques for storing and retrieving alternative solutions for one or more NFR, allowing software engineers to visualise the impacts of each solution. A prototype tool to support this activity was recently finished, and it is prepared to be available in a cloud environment to facilitate a broad use of it in the future. My long-term goal is to engineer the Non-Functional and Design Rationale (NDR) framework to help software engineers to elicit and model non-functional requirements empowered by a knowledge that has previously been elicited. I believe that the use of a well-defined knowledge base can play a major role to achieve this goal. Therefore, the NDR Framework will emerge as the result of further developing our ontology and create methods, techniques and tools to store and retrieve knowledge on implementing non-functional requirements. The framework will also provide methods to integrate NFRs into functional specifications. The NDR Framework will be first made available to the academic community to evaluate it and to later contribute to the knowledge repository. After the framework is stable and mature, we will also allow members from the industry to query the knowledge base and, in the long run, to submit contributions to be added to the knowledge base.

需求工程师必须同时满足功能需求和非功能需求(NFR)才能开发软件系统。功能需求负责根据可用的功能来表示系统的能力，而非功能需求则表示质量属性。一些常见的NFR包括隐私、性能、可用性、可用性以及与软件系统质量相关的其他类似方面。这项研究的目的是提供一个促进软件开发过程的环境，该环境将有利于重用满足与功能需求相关的非功能需求的知识。引出非功能需求的第一个挑战在于它们本质上是模糊的，并且经常被软件工程师和利益相关者遗漏。此外，选择一种解决方案来实施一种NFR可能会带来协同效应，也许最重要的是，会给其他NFR带来冲突。一些工作建议使用目录来获取关于实现NFR的替代方案的知识，以此作为一种方式，不仅有助于得出NFR，而且还有助于对在备选方案中进行选择所涉及的复杂性进行推理。这些目录是使用SoftGoal相互依赖图(SIG)实现的。SIGS目录促进了基本质量特征的图形表示，以满足给定的非功能需求。事实上，经验研究表明，目录的使用可以帮助避免遗漏和错过的冲突，尽管SIG的伸缩性不是太好。我最近提议使用语义网技术支持的NFR本体来存储和检索一个或多个NFR的替代解决方案，使软件工程师能够可视化每个解决方案的影响。支持这一活动的原型工具最近已经完成，它准备在云环境中使用，以促进它在未来的广泛使用。我的长期目标是设计非功能性和设计合理性(NDR)框架，以帮助软件工程师引出非功能性需求并对其进行建模，这些需求是由以前获得的知识所授权的。我相信，使用定义明确的知识库可以在实现这一目标方面发挥重要作用。因此，NDR框架将作为进一步发展我们的本体的结果而出现，并创建方法、技术和工具来存储和检索关于实现非功能性需求的知识。该框架还将提供将NFR纳入功能规范的方法。将首先向学术界提供《国家发展报告框架》，以对其进行评估，并在以后为知识库作出贡献。在架构稳定和成熟后，我们亦会让业界成员查询知识库，长远而言，亦会让他们提交意见，加入知识库。