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Reasoning About Functional and Non-Functional Concerns During Model Refinement: A Goal-Oriented and Knowledge Based Approach

Reasoning About Functional and Non-Functional Concerns During Model Refinement: A Goal-Oriented and Knowledge Based Approach
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Author(s): Lawrence Chung (The University of Texas at Dallas, USA)and Sam Supakkul (Titat Software LLC, USA)
Copyright: 2006
Pages: 4
Source title: Emerging Trends and Challenges in Information Technology Management
Source Editor(s): Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, D.B.A. (Information Resources Management Association, USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-019-6.ch221
ISBN13: 9781616921286
EISBN13: 9781466665361

Abstract

Traditional model driven development follows the stepwise refinement approach where early phase models are gradually refined with more details from one version to another and from one phase to another successively until they are expressed in the terms of the underlying programming language. Every refinement step implies some design decisions. The quality of a software system largely depends on how good, or bad, these decisions are. The quality of decisions in turn would depend on what kind of alternatives are explored, what kind of trade-offs are analyzed, and how a particular selection is made. However, the process of decision making is carried out only informally, where the knowledge and rationale that led to the decision are not explicitly documented. This makes it difficult for others to understand why certain decisions were made and to reuse the knowledge. This paper presents a goal-oriented and knowledge-based approach for explicitly representing, organizing, and reusing software development knowledge. In this framework, nonfunctional characteristics, such as performance and security, are treated as (soft) goals to be achieved and act as the criteria for selecting the alternatives. The application of this framework is illustrated using the refinement of a UML sequence diagram message.

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