R-TOOL: A SUPPORTING TOOL FOR A QUALITY

ORIENTED REUSE STRATEGY

Maryoly Ortega, Anna Grimán, María Pérez and Luis E. Mendoza

Departamento de Procesos y Sistemas, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Valle de Sartenejas,Caracas, Venezuela

Keywords: Ontology, Reuse Strategy, Software Quality, V&V, Tool.

Abstract: The quality of reusable elements must be rigorously monitored and guaranteed before they can be reused,

this is known as Certification. High levels of certification of these elements generate trust and stimulate

reuse. In this paper we describe the development of a tool based on quality oriented reuse strategies. To this

end, we take as starting point an ontology that rigorously correlates the essential concepts of systematic

reuse to quality. This ontology reinforces the proposed strategy, which in turn is supported by the tool. The

methodology used is based upon the Methodological Systemic Framework for Information Systems

Research. For the development of the tool, we used the iterative incremental development process Rational

Unified Process (RUP.) We took into account the inception and elaboration phases, and developed an

iteration of the construction phase. As a result of the development process we built a tool which supports the

main activities of the proposed strategy. These activities are Certify Domain Models, Requirement

Specifications, Architectural Designs and Code, through checklists, allowing to store, classify, search and

recovery the reusable elements and its properties.

1 INTRODUCTION

We can reuse not only software components but also

artifacts that were developed along the development

process (Reifer, 1997).

The certification of reusable elements allows

developers to assure high levels of quality before the

elements are reused. Reuse promotes improvements

when developing software, since it increases

productivity and quality within the development

process (Sommerville, 2004).

The objective of this paper is to build a tool

which supports a quality oriented reuse strategy.

The strategy aims to systematically introduce

reuse since the beginning of the software

development process, conceiving the reuse not only

of Software Components but also of other artifacts

such as Domain Models, Requirement

Specifications, and Architectural Design.

Next, in section two we present a summary of the

background upon which the research was developed.

In section 3 we will describe the research

methodology. Section 4 describes the strategy to

support quality oriented reuse. Section 5 presents the

development of the supporting tool. Finally, section

6 presents some concluding remarks and future

work.

2 BACKGROUND

According to Frakes and Kang (2005), software

reuse is the use of existing software or software

knowledge to construct new software. Systematic

reuse is introduced early in the life-cycle of software

development. It is a formal and well-documented

process, it is domain-specific and based on a re-

creative process (Sodhi and Sodhi, 1999). Reusable

assets can be either reusable software or software

knowledge. According to (Reifer, 1997) there are six

properties for software products to become reusable

assets: Domain Specific, Generalized Form, Fixed

Functionality, Known Performance, Well-bounded

Interfaces, Demonstrable Quality.

The Asset Management is the process used to

manage the reusable elements making them

available to users in a satisfactory way. This process

considers four activities: Library Management,

Library Population, Library Operation, and Library

Maintenance (Reifer 1997).

Library Population includes the certification

process that guarantees an element possesses a

particular property (Li et al., 2002). The V&V

activities use techniques which are classified into:

static (revisions, inspections, walkthroughs, audits),

dynamic (white-box testing and black-box testing),

599

Ortega M., Grimán A., Pérez M. and E. Mendoza L. (2007).

R-TOOL: A SUPPORTING TOOL FOR A QUALITY ORIENTED REUSE STRATEGY.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 599-602

DOI: 10.5220/0002393005990602

 SciTePress

inquisitive (questionnaires, checklists and

scenarios), and measuring activities (architecture

description languages, and metrics).

Ghiotto et al. (2006) proposed ontology where

these reuse concepts and quality concepts are linked.

This ontology was the base for the proposed tool in

this paper.

3 METHODOLOGICAL

FRAMEWORK

This research used the Methodological Framework

for Research of Information Systems (Pérez et al.,

2004).

The adaptation of the Methodological

Framework for this work consists of ten steps: 1)

Documentary and bibliographical research; 2)

Background Analysis; 3) Formulation of the

Objectives and Scope of the Research; 4) Adaptation

of the Methodological Framework; 5) Proposal of a

strategy to support quality reuse; 6) Analysis of

Context; 7) Application of the DESMET

Methodology (Kitchenham, 1996), the method most

appropriate to evaluate the strategy was the feature

analysis-survey; 8) Evaluation of the proposed

strategy; 9) Analysis of the results; 10) Conclusions

and Recommendations.

4 PROPOSED STRATEGY

The proposed strategy to be supported by the tool

was based in three paradigms (Ramachandran, 2005;

Reifer, 1997): 1) it specifies the domain, 2) it is

supported by the process and 3) it has organizational

and management support. From a quality point of

view the strategy will follow the GQM (Basili,

1992) paradigm. The objective of the measurement

will be identified for each type of reusable element

using their characteristics. Metrics will be used to

determine the level of certification of the elements.

4.1 Objectives of the Strategy

The objectives of the reuse strategy are: 1) To

introduce reuse within the software development

process: 1.1) To implement reuse at an early stage of

the life cycle; 1.2) To reuse other elements in

addition to the code; 2) To reduce the timeframes

associated with the process of software

development; 3). To reach the third level of the of

Software Reuse Maturity Model-RMM (Sodhi y

Sodhi, 1999). The repository must be populated with

certified and validated elements. A set of initial

metrics are implemented to reflect the benefits of

reuse in terms of production of high quality and

better profitability.; 4) To increase the levels of

quality of each reusable element before its reuse;

and 5) To promote reuse within the development

group.

4.2 Components of the Strategy

We identified the following components in the

strategy: a) Domain Analysis in the development

process; b) Domain Analyst Role; c) Reuse within

all the phases of the software development process;

d) Use of standards and e) Use of a repository of

reusable elements

5 DEVELOPMENT OF R-TOOL

5.1 Inception Phase

The purpose of the Inception phase is to achieve an

agreement with the stakeholders, regarding the

objectives of the project (Rational, 2000; Kruchten,

2003).

5.1.1 Vision

This document provides a complete vision of the

software system under development and supports the

contract between the funding authority (Research

Lab for Information Systems, LISI) and the

development entity. The problem is to store large

amounts of software elements and/or information

manually which exhibit great potential for reuse.

This problem affects analysts, architects and

developers. One solution is to automate the storage,

classification, search and recovery of the software

elements.

5.1.2 Functional Requirements Specification

This document is used to express the behavior of R-

tool. The functional requirement are: Log system

users, Register users, Authenticate users, Certify

reusable elements, Introduce reusable elements to

the repository, Eliminate the reusable elements,

Browse a catalogue of reusable elements, Locate

reusable elements, Recover reusable elements,

Modify checklists, Produce time statistics, Manage

reuse statistics, Send an e-mail to the author of the

element when it is reused, Manage Patterns, Specify

Goal Question Metrics, Certify Use Case Diagrams

and Activity Diagrams, Certify through checklists,

Answer to checklists, Management of vocabulary.

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5.1.3 Supplementary Requirements

Specification

We take as a reference the quality model ISO/IEC

9126 to present a list of detailed complementary

requirements for R-tool: 1) The system must be a

web application; 2) The system must be sustainable

and evolving; 3) The system must be user-friendly;

4) The system must be efficient; 5) The system must

be tolerant to failures; 6) The system must reflect the

reuse philosophy.

5.1.4 Initial Use Case Model

The use case model of the tool for support of the

quality reuse strategies shows a total of 74 use cases.

Figure 1 shows the global vision of the actors and

sub-systems of the tool.

Figure 1: Global view of the actors and sub-systems of R-

tool.

Figure 2: Elements and Certification Management

Subsystem.

The use cases which are critical for the first

iteration of the Construction phase of the (RUP)

methodology are related to the Elements and

Certification Subsystem (see Figure 2).

Figure 3 shows a diagram of the use case for the

Requirement Specification Certification Subsystem.

Figure 3: Requirement Specification Certification

Subsystem.

5.2 Elaboration Phase

The purpose of the Elaboration phase is to determine

a baseline for the system. We present the Conceptual

Model of the Logical View for the tool (see Figure

4).

Legend: DM-Domain Model, RS-Requirement Specification, AD-

Architectural Design, C-Code

Figure 4: Conceptual Model of the tool.

Certify

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Specification

Certify

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Certify

Activity

Diagrams

Certify

Use Case

Diagrams

Certify

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Walkthrough

Certify

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Revision

Answer to

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<<extends>>

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<<extends>>

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<<extends>>

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DM Best

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RS Best

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practices

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practices

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element

Attribute

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attribute

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Attribute

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Tec hnique

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Catalog

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Domain

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Level

<<related with>>

<<classified >>

<<based on>>

<<qualifies>>

<<uses>><<uses>>

<<answers to>>

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R-TOOL: A SUPPORTING TOOL FOR A QUALITY ORIENTED REUSE STRATEGY

601

5.3 Construction Phase

The reach of the construction phase for this version

of the tool is limited to only one iteration, in which

we implement the use cases identified as critics: 1)

Certifying four types of reusable elements: Domain

Model, Requirement Specification, Architectural

Design and Code Modules. There are three types of

diagrams that can be certified: Use Case, Activity,

and Class Diagrams; 2) To store reusable elements

in a repository; 3) Eliminate reusable elements from

the repository; 4) Search for reusable elements

through four types of search: by name, by keyword,

by project and by catalogue consult; Modify

checklists used as certification mechanisms.

The first version of the tool presents a checklist

to certify Requirements Specifications, that includes

some questions, e.g. Has all business use cases been

classified according to its relevance (primary,

secondary, optional)?, Do the requirements define

all the information that will be displayed to user?,

etc.

The properties stored for each reusable element

are: File name, Element name, File type, Author e-

mail, Description, Time employed in elaborating the

element, Language, Project where the element was

developed, Keywords, Certification level,

Performance (code), Use restrictions, Environmental

restrictions, etc.

6 CONCLUSIONS

Checking for the desired quality characteristics for

each element the tool allows us to guarantee that the

reusable elements have an adequate level of quality.

In addition, the tool promotes reuse and allows users

to certify storage, search and recover reusable

elements. The tool will keep track of their properties

and history in any organization.

Future work considers the evolution of the tool

as well as the development of methodologies and

quality methods which favor quality reuse during the

software’s development process.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We acknowledge Pamela Ghiotto for her

collaboration in this research. This research was

supported by Universidad Simón Bolívar: DID

Project # S1-IN-CAI-012-06 and by the Science and

Technology Ministery of R. B. Venezuela: Fonacit

Project # S1-2005000165.

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