Toward Component Non-functional Interoperability Analysis: A UML-based and Goal-Oriented Approach

Abstract

Component-Based Development (CBD) has a great potential of reducing development cost and time by integrating existing software components. But it also faces many challenges one of which is ensuring interoperability of the components that may have been developed with different functional and non-functional goals. The software community has traditionally focused more on the functional aspect of the interoperability such as syntactic and semantic compatibility. However, incompatibility from the non-functional aspect could lead to poor quality such as insufficient security or even inoperable system. This paper presents a preliminary framework for analyzing non-functional requirements (NFRs) defined for the component required and provided interfaces. The components are considered nonfunctionally interoperable when they agree on the definition and implementation techniques used to achieve the NFRs. Any detected mismatches can be resolved using a combination of the three presented tactics, including replacing the server component, negotiating for more attainable NFRs, or using an adapter component to bridge the non-functional differences. A running example based on a simplified web-based conference management system is used to illustrate the application of this framework.

The NORMAP Methodology: Lightweight Engineering of Non-functional Requirements for Agile Processes

“…This method introduces the non-functional required interphase (NRI), and the non-functional provided interface (NPI) concepts [6]. NRI specifies the NFRs the customer component expects to be accomplished.…”

“…These environments have heterogeneous characteristics from diverse sources. Several methods of interoperability among heterogeneous systems are proposed [2][3][4][5][6][7]. NFRFramework [3] is used to design and implement functional requirements of the software system; and LISI [2] is used to evaluate and achieve interoperability.…”

“…Interoperability relates to the system interconnection needs in heterogeneous environments. A set of activities is proposed in different methods for achieving interoperability in the development process [2][3][4][5][6][7].…”

“…Neither the NFR-Framework [3], the NFRE [4], the method of functional interoperability analysis (traditional methodologies) [6], the NORMAP (agile methodologies) [5], nor other models [7] are used to define specific practices with enough detail on the activities and work products, which are necessary for supporting the interoperability processes.…”

Modeling and Analyzing Non-Functional Properties to Support Software Integration

“…Only three properties are supported (performance, reliability, availability). [31] analyzes NFR of provided and required component interfaces. Additionally they provide tactics to resolve mismatches.…”