Using Web Services and Mobile Devices to Reuse on Requirements

Engineering

Karla Donato Fook

, Irlanilson Rodrigues Santos

Maxwellen Nayra Silva Castro

and Zair Abdelouahab

Department of Informatics, Maranhão Federal Institute for Education, Science and Technology (IFMA),

São Luís-MA, Brazil

Department of Electrical Engineering, Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), São Luís-MA, Brazil

Keywords: Requirements Engineering, Reuse, MROBJER, Mobile Application.

Abstract: Agility in software specification has been a key feature aimed by development teams. An important concept

in this context is reuse. MROBJER is a method that supports goals and scenarios reuse through analogies

among complex software systems. FROBJER is computational tool which was developed to support

MROBJER application. However, this tool performs reuse in a standalone way using a local database. This

paper presents a platform which involves Web service and a mobile application to improve FROBJER

architecture. This approach allows MROBJER to run in a mobile platform through FROBJERMobile

application.

1 INTRODUCTION

Software specification includes the requirement

engineering phase which aims to improve software

product analysis and modeling. This phase includes

activities to elicit software requirements

(Sommerville, 2006). A requirement is a description

of something the system is able to carry out to reach

its goals (Pfleeger, 2001).

One challenge is to get more accurate

requirements allowing good understanding of what

is expected in a new application (Pressman et al.,

2005); (Sommerville, 2006). Requirements

representation may often be subject to redundancies,

inconsistencies and misunderstandings. As it

demands a notable effort from the developer,

researchers propose solutions for this phase to

promote the understanding, management and

maintenance of requirements set describing the new

system. Reuse brings several benefits to the

development and may lead to software with more

quality.

Aiming to reuse requirements, Fook and

Abdelouahab (2001) propose a goal reuse method

called MROBJER. A computational tool was

developed to support method application,

FROBJER. The early version was developed in

Desktop platform. The massive mobile devices use

and Web technologies in application development

platforms demanded for an FROBJER architecture

expansion. This expansion provides more flexibility,

mobility and decentralization in MROBJER

application. Requirements engineer can apply the

method anywhere by Internet from a mobile phone,

for instance. Our main motivation is to provide a

tool which allows method application in a large-

scale.

This paper presents FROBJERMobile

architecture. The expansion will take to new

perspectives to the requirements engineers, and

MROBJER application may occur more widely.

2 RELATED WORK

Researchers proposed several methods to discovery,

management and maintenance of requirements over

the years. Some examples are GORE – Goal Driven

Requirements Engineering, KAOS – Knowledge

Acquisition in Automated Specification (Dardenne

et al., 1993), and ESPRIT CREWS (Rolland et al.,

1998). Many Methods do consider software tools to

discover, analyze and verify requirements, but only a

497

Donato Fook K., Rodrigues Santos I., Nayra Silva Castro M. and Abdelouahab Z..

Using Web Services and Mobile Devices to Reuse on Requirements Engineering.

DOI: 10.5220/0004373704970500

In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST-2013), pages 497-500

ISBN: 978-989-8565-54-9

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

few consider software tools aiming for requirements

reuse.

Many authors refer to software system functional

requirements as goals. Sem and Hemachandram

(2012) present goals as a method to identify

requirements during the requirement engineering

phase. Rocco (2002) asserts that software goals

settle guidelines to organize what is being needed by

users.

Based on this perspective, Fook and

Abdelouahab (2001) proposed a goal reuse method

for requirements engineering, MROBJER. This

method focuses on improving requirements

elicitation, analysis and validation. Authors develop

FROBJER, a computational tool to apply

MROBJER. Differently from the proposed tools, the

reuse is the focus of FROBJER.

3 MROBJER

The goal reuse method for Requirement

Engineering, MROBJER, allows the goals and

scenarios reuse through complex applications

analogy. Authors consider that clients can easily list

goals to be reached in their tasks.

First, requirement engineers map a structure to

compare applications from the same or different

Domains, and then they identify the goals. In this

method reuse is not restricted to systems from the

same domain, but they also include systems from

different domains. There are different mapping

levels, such as software domain and the subdomain.

Following, the application is mapped as

functional aggregations set. Generic goals are also

identified with their respective scenarios.

Requirements engineers list goals considered

generic, the ones which may be common to other

applications. The approach proposes a generic goals

representation:

Gen

Goal

N = {Domain, “Description”, Main

Verb, Main Object, <Parameter> [0..n]}, where:

N: is the Goal identification number;

Description: is goal brief description;

n: number of goal parameters.

The verb and the main object of a generic goal

are identified. The generic goals contain variable

parts and are labeled parameters. They are identified

by determinants < >. Once the generic goals are

formatted, requirements engineer inserts all the

structure into a repository. Figure 1 shows the

structure mapping which allows goals reuse.

Figure 1: MROBJER Process (Castro and Fook, 2011).

The reuse happens whenever a new application uses

one or more generic goal from the repository.

Generic goals and scenarios can be partial or totally

reused by the new application. In case of partial use,

a parameterization process occurs. After reusing the

new application specific goals are included into

repository. The FROBJER produces a document

which can serve as a basis to the new application

Requirements Document. For more details on

MROBJER application, it is suggested to read Fook

and Abdelouahab (2001).

Although MROBJER may be applied in

manually

way, it becomes difficult to keep mapped

structures in simple text documents due to

information amount in these files. Thus there is a

tool to support MROBJER, FROBJER. This

program improves the method application through a

database repository instead of text document.

Besides, it supports best application of goals and

scenarios parameterization during partial reuse. Next

section presents FROBJER architecture.

4 FROBJER ARCHITECTURE

Once the new application is mapped, FROBJER

allows the requirements engineer to apply

MROBJER in a short time.

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Despite this advantage, FROBJER Desktop

version does not allow for more than one engineer to

use the method application in different locations at

the same time. Thus, authors proposed an expansion

of FROBJER architecture. They developed

FROBJERMobile software to support a distributed

way of MROBJER application. This approach

makes available the mapped structures in a Web

server repository. The analysts may access the

repository from mobile devices when visiting

clients, for instance. This feature removes local

barriers, and requirements engineers can work from

anywhere. There are three layers in this architecture

expansion as shown below.

Figure 2: FROBJER expanded architecture.

FROBJER architecture involves Desktop, Web and

Mobile Layers. The Desktop layer is part of the

FROBJER original architecture where the local

repository is kept in a local repository. The Web

layer and Mobile layer are part of FROBJER

architecture expansion. The Web layer includes the

Web repository, the Web application and the Web

service. The Mobile layer consists of an application

developed to mobile devices.

FROBJER, Web service and FROBJERMobile

Android applications were developed in Java

(Armstrong et al., 2003); (Android Portal, 2012);

(Mednieks et al., 2011). Local and Web repository

are MySQL databases. Each layer will be described

in the following sessions.

4.1 Desktop Layer

The Desktop layer consists of an FROBJER Desktop

version which allows the standalone use by the

client. Its interface provides all mapped structures

visualization. It is also possible partial or total reuse

of generic goals and its scenarios. This application

produces a document with new application goals.

4.2 Web Layer

The Web layer is an intermediate layer, and includes

a Web repository, a Web service, and a Web

application. The Web application synchronizes the

local repository with the Web repository while the

Web service intermediates this repository and the

mobile application. The Web service access the Web

repository for querying and updating from mobile

application.

4.3 Mobile Layer

The Mobile layer includes the application which

allows many Requirement Engineers to access

mapped structures in the Web repository from

mobile devices. They may be in different geographic

locations to access the Web repository in real time,

this way providing flexibility, mobility and new

work perspectives.

This application, called FROBJERMobile, was

developed in the Android platform using Java

Programming Language (Armstrong et al., 2003);

(Chappell and Jewel, 2002). Figures 3, 4 and 5 show

some interfaces of the mobile layer application.

Figure 3: FROBJERMobile Interface.

Figure 3 shows interface to select an application and

its mapping. Thereby it will be able to analyze

generic goals and perform reuse.

Figure below shows a selected goal is shown in

this interface to be reused. The items between “< >”

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are the parameters which may be altered in case of

partial reuse. For each generic goal to be reused

there is an available scenario.

Figure 4: FROBJERMobile – Goal visualization.

Figure 5 shows the FROBJERMobile interface to

manage these scenarios.

Figure 5: FROBJERMobile – Scenarios.

The scenarios describe a generic goal in the Web

repository. In this case the user may select the one to

be reused.

5 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

This text presented the FROBJER architecture

expansion. This new architecture allows a new way

to apply MROBJER through mobile devices

application, FROBJERMobile. Now, requirements

engineers are able to elicit and reuse requirements

using a cellular phone.

It is believed that this new way will bring out

flexibility and resources to help up with the complex

specification activity.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks go to CNPq (National Counsel of

Technological and Scientific Development); and to

FAPEMA (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa e ao

Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico do

Maranhão) for partially supporting this research.

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