Page 1 An Overview of The COTS-Aware Requirements Engineering and Software Architecting Project (CARE/SA) The University of Texas at Dallas Department of Computer Science Fall 2004

Page 2 Topics COTS-Aware? Issues, Motivation Introduction to COTS-Aware Requirements Engineering and Architecting Overview of the CARE/SA Approach Validation of CARE/SA Digital Library System Summary and Future Work

Page 3 Why COTS-Aware? Current state-of-the-art COTS approach (e.g. Rational Unified Process): Develop Requirements Develop Architecture Develop Detailed Design and Consider COTS COTS Components Must Meet Functional AND Non-functional Requirements AND Fit With the Architecture Detailed design phase is too late Difficult to find COTS components, costly to change requirements, architecture, detailed design, and test cases  Consider the use of COTS components earlier i.e., in the Requirements and Architecting workflows

Page 4 Why COTS-Aware? Software Engineering Issues for CARE/SA Customer “Satisficing” Meet the non-functional goals and requirements in a “good enough” sense Flexibility of Customer Requirements Specification, Matching, Selecting, Integrating COTS Components Goal- and Agent-oriented Model Based Process, product, meta-model Knowledge Based Should Consider the Impact on Entire SDLC

Page 5 Why COTS-Aware? Effective Use of COTS Components is a Complex Problem COTS Issues have been categorized as: Technical Issues Acquisition, Selection, Interactions, Incomplete product information,... Business Issues Loss of Autonomy Costs/benefits: short term vs. long term Legal Issues Licensing

Page 6 Overview of CARE/SA Our Methodology Iterative strategy Define, extend/refine, and validate CARE/SA models and tool support Re-use, extend existing processes, models, standards (e.g., tailor RUP, extend SPEM, re-use OMG MOF, …) Validate using examples from a Digital Library System, Telepresence system, Home Appliance Control System, and Groupware application Large scale, complex systems with a rich set of functional and non-functional requirements

Page 7 Overview of CARE/SA CARE/SA considers how to represent and reason about: Agents Goals Software Requirements Software Architecture COTS Components Relationships Among Artifacts (new traceability required) Mapping System Goals to COTS Components Mapping Software Requirements to COTS Components Mapping Architectural subsystems to COTS Components Tracing Agent to Goals Tracing Goals to Software Requirements Tracing Goals and Requirements to Architecture Subsystems Constraints (or rules) Among Artifacts Defining NFR Framework relationships (makes, helps, hurts, breaks) …

Page 8 High Level View of the Process Model (IDEF0 Notation) Define Architecture (with COTS) 5 SA Architecture, SA Decisions, Update Component Goals, Specs Initial System Concept, System Goals Software Requirements Component Repository RE and CE Expertise System Goals Software Requirements Architecture Component Repository Maintain Component Repository 6 CE Update Component Goals, Update Component Specs. RE and SA Expertise Updated Component Repository, CE Decisions Define Requirements (with COTS) 5 RE Agents, Goals, Requirements RE Decisions, Update Component Goals, Specs Initial System Concept, System Goals Software Requirements Component Repository Architecture SA and CE Expertise Overview of CARE/SA

Page 9 Overview of CARE/SA Mapping Goals, Requirements, and Architecture Subsystems to COTS Components Component Repository (Component Requirements, Architecture, …) System Under Development (System Goals, Requirements, Architecture…) Component 2 Reqs. Architecture Component n Reqs. Architecture … Goal 1 Softgoal 2 Software Requirement Software Requirement … Component 1 Reqs. Architecture Mapping System Goals to Component Goals Mapping Requirements to Component Specification Mapping Architectures to Component Specifications Agent Goal n Subsystem Architecture Software Architecture Elements Architecture Elements Subsystem Architecture Software Requirement …

Page 10 Validation We have applied CARE/SA to part of a Digital Library System (DLS) Partial illustration below is from MPEC 2004 paper

Page 11 Summary and Future Work CARE/SA approach –Supports the definition of agents, goals, software requirements, COTS components and architectural elements –Demonstrated using an example from a Digital Library System –Detailed description of CARE and examples are available in TR UTDCS-11-02, Note. The process model is being ported from IDEF0 to activity diagrams in UML This term? –Additional validation using scenarios –Extend the CARE Assistant Tool (CAT) to support the scenarios and make it widely available to researchers –Investigate alternative reasoning techniques for COTS matching and selection