WS&i*-RGPS: An Approach to Service-Oriented Requirements Engineering Based on RGPS Metamodels

Abstract

Owing to the dynamics of the business environment in which organizations must adapt to changes quickly, the information systems have recently had to adapt to new situations so that they can keep adding value efficiently and effectively. In the light of this scenario, a new discipline called Service-oriented Systems Engineering (SOSE) has emerged in the academic scene and this has highlighted the disciplined, systematic and quantified development of Service-oriented Computing systems. This discipline is divided into other subdisciplines; one of these sub-disciplines is Service-oriented Requirements Engineering (SORE) and is concerned with defining processes and methodologies to address the question of services requirements from two different perspectives: service consumers and service providers. In the context of SORE, this paper proposes a WS&i*-RGPS approach that explores some alternatives to the descriptions proposed by the Role, Goal, Process and Service (RGPS) metamodels -an approach in SORE. This involves a new definition that seeks to incorporate the advantages of other models -established in the literature -with RGPS. Accordingly, this new approach outlines the use of the i* framework to describe the Role and Goal layers and shows the use of WS-BPEL/WSDL to describe the process and service layers. The use of the i* framework sets out the goals for managing different aspects of the systems specification. Among its advantages are stability, support in the detection of conflicts, analysis and negotiation. WS-BPEL/WSDL is chosen because of its maturity and widespread use in the state of practice, which increases the chance of this new approach being adopted by industry.