Representing Software Process in Description Logics: An Ontology Approach for Software Process Reasoning and Verification

Kabaale, Edward; Wen, Lian; Wang, Zhe; Rout, Terry

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-38980-6_26

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As this work is ongoing, we are yet to evaluate it in a practical setting. However, the work presented in this paper and the algorithm developed in earlier work [13] forms a conceptual foundation for the development of a software process translation tool that we are currently developing. This tool will enable us to evaluate our approach in a practical setting in future work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the semantics and consistency of the instantiated processes in respect to the metamodel are largely undefined in the current approaches. In earlier work [13], we have shown how the semantics of the instantiated process can be used for process reasoning, verification and conformance to the process model. This provides our motivation for the current section by extending the semantic mapping from the metamodel further to the process instances.…”

Section: Ontology Based Process Metamodelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The metamodel is translated to an OWL DL ontology through a translation algorithm developed in our earlier work [13] for consistency checking, verification and query answering. The T angibleKind and T angible classes at M 2 and M 1 respectively are translated to OWL DL TBox.…”

Section: Ontology Based Process Metamodelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…constraint checking of required relations among activities, work products and roles). Even though these process modeling techniques enhance software development activities, they still need formal enhancement to enable process automation and verification [10][11][12][13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

An Axiom Based Metamodel for Software Process Formalisation: An Ontology Approach

Kabaale

Wen

Wang

et al. 2017

Communications in Computer and Information Science

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Software development usually follows well known process models and standards for development processes. However, these are usually diverse and described in natural language which complicates their automation, adaptivity and verification. The need for process formalisation has long been highlighted, and we have provided a formalisation and translation algorithm to that effect in earlier work. However, to systematically and faithfully formalise heterogeneous processes from different standards and process models, there is a need to utilise uniform concepts to underpin the formalisation process. Metamodels and ontologies have been explored recently to lay a foundation for structuring and expressing additional rigour to process formalisation. In this study, we develop an axiom based metamodel utilising powertype patterns as a conceptual framework to underpin homogeneous process formalisation. The advantage of an axiomatic and powertype based metamodel approach lies in its potential to determine the metamodel basic constituents and formalism as well as its extensibility and adaptability. We formalise the metamodel using ontologies while adopting use cases from ISO/IEC 29110 and ISO/IEC 24744 standards for metamodel illustrations. Ontology based process descriptions enable process automated verification and adaptivity capability through the use of ontology reasoning support engines.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ontology Based Process Metamodelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ontology Based Process Metamodelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

An Axiom Based Metamodel for Software Process Formalisation: An Ontology Approach

Kabaale

Wen

Wang

et al. 2017

Communications in Computer and Information Science

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In earlier studies [19,20], we developed a translation scheme and metamodel for consistent and uniform process formalisation. In the current study, we leverage such a formal process specification for process verification since formal models are basically a set of domain theorems that are amenable to formal proving through reasoning [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ensuring Conformance to Process Standards Through Formal Verification

Kabaale

Wen

Wang

et al. 2018

Communications in Computer and Information Science

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Software process standards and models encapsulate best practices and guidelines for managing and engineering software. For easy accessibility, process standards are usually prescribed in natural language. However, natural language based process specifications can be inconsistent and ambiguous that makes it difficult to monitor and verify if they have been fully implemented and adhered too in a given software project. Besides the process of defining and documenting the necessary evidence to comply with process standard requirements is often manual, time consuming and laborious. In earlier studies, we developed a translation scheme and metamodel for consistent and uniform software process formalisation. In the current study, we leverage the formal process specification to develop a two-step formal process verification approach; first we extract process requirements from the standard documents and translate them into logical axioms. We then augment these axioms with additional information in a process verification ontology. This ontology is then utilised in conformance verification of a performed process. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach with software requirements analysis process and a case study.

show abstract

Compliance checking of software processes: A systematic literature review

Ardila

Gallina

Muram

2022

J Software Evolu Process

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The processes used to develop software need to comply with normative requirements (e.g., standards and regulations) to align with the market and the law. Manual compliance checking is challenging because there are numerous requirements with changing nature and different purposes. Despite the importance of automated techniques, there is not any systematic study in this field. This lack may hinder organizations from moving toward automated compliance checking practices. In this paper, we characterize the methods for automatic compliance checking of software processes, including used techniques, potential impacts, and challenges. For this, we undertake a systematic literature review (SLR) of studies reporting methods in this field. As a result, we identify solutions that use different techniques (e.g., anthologies and metamodels) to represent processes and their artifacts (e.g., tasks and roles). Various languages, which have diverse capabilities for managing competing and changing norms, and agile strategies, are also used to represent normative requirements. Most solutions require tool‐support concretization and enhanced capabilities to handle processes and normative diversity. Our findings outline compelling areas for future research. In particular, there is a need to select suitable languages for consolidating a generic and normative‐agnostic solution, increase automation levels, tool support, and boost the application in practice by improving usability aspects.

show abstract

Representing Software Process in Description Logics: An Ontology Approach for Software Process Reasoning and Verification

Cited by 7 publications

References 9 publications

An Axiom Based Metamodel for Software Process Formalisation: An Ontology Approach

An Axiom Based Metamodel for Software Process Formalisation: An Ontology Approach

Ensuring Conformance to Process Standards Through Formal Verification

Compliance checking of software processes: A systematic literature review

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About