Towards a Metamodel for a Requirements Engineering Process of Embedded Systems

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Towards a Metamodel for a Requirements Engineering

Process of Embedded Systems

Tarcísio Pereira, Deivson Albuquerque, Aêda Sousa, Fernanda Alencar and Jaelson Castro

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Outline• Motivation;• Goals;• Systematic Literature Review;• Metamodel Development Process;• Assessment and Evolution of the Model;• REPES Process;• Related Works;• Conclusion and Future Works.

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Motivation

• Requirements for software products;• Requirements engineering process is crucial to meet

time, cost, and quality goals;• There is a lack of methods, techniques, and

requirements engineering tools specially developed for the embedded systems domain;

• Systematic Literature Review;

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Motivation

• We analyzed 75 studies;• Results;– i) there is nothing that can be used as a reference

for the development of requirements engineering for embedded systems;

– ii) just one study covers all phases of the requirements engineering;

– iii) there is no well-defined requirements engineering process for embedded systems;

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Motivation

• We analyzed 75 studies;• Results;– iv) there is nothing that can be used as input for

model transformation if model-driven development is intended; and,

– v) the studies do not consider business and environment for their proposals.

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Goals

• To address this shortcoming, we propose a Metamodel for Embedded Systems (MM4ES) and

• A sketch of a Requirements Engineering Process for Embedded Systems called REPES.

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Systematic Literature Review (SLR)

• A SLR is an exploratory study to investigate evidence in the literature about a specific theme [Kitchenham, 2009];

• How is requirements engineering used in the embedded systems context?

• 1970 – 2016;• 11403 studies – 75 studies;

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Systematic Literature Review Process

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• (i) How requirements engineering approaches are contributing to the solution of requirements engineering problems in the embedded systems domain?

• (ii) what phases of the requirements engineering process have been supported by the approaches?

• (iii)what are the domains that the approaches support?• (iv)what are the open issues that the approaches have?

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• (i) How requirements engineering approaches are contributing to the solution of requirements engineering problems in the embedded systems domain? – ambiguity, inconsistency, and/or incompleteness (18

studies – 24%);– requirements management evolution (15 studies –

20%);– requirements specification (13 studies – 17.3%).

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• (ii) what phases of the requirements engineering process have been supported by the approaches? – specification (56 studies – 74.6%);– validation (31 studies – 41.3%);– analysis and negotiation (30 studies – 40%);– elicitation (19 studies – 25.3%);– management (14 studies – 18.6%)

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• (iii)what are the domains that the approaches support?– transportation (29 studies, 38.6%);– not applicable (20 studies, 26.6%);– automation technology (13 studies, 19.4%);– avionics (15 studies, 20%);– medical technology (12 studies, 16%);– energy technology (1 study, 1.3%).

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• (iv)what are the open issues that the approaches have?– specification of non-functional requirements (12

studies – 16%);– requirements modeling (11 studies – 14.6%);– automated tool support (10 studies - 13.3%).

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Metamodel Development Process

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Metamodel Development Process

MM4ES – First version

Relation Cardinality Document – First version

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Assessment and Evolution of the Model

• Goal: Analyze the metamodel for the purpose of checking whether the concepts are correct with respect to the natural language narrative from the point of view of an expert domain in the context of medical device development;

• Scenario: Insulin Infusion Pumps;

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• Natural Language Narrative;

• Jhon, Mary, Fred, and Thomas are stakeholders on the development of an embedded system. They are working on the elaboration of a low-cost insulin infusion pump. The system they are producing belongs to an environment to its operation. The stakeholders must know the domain knowledge and the business (and its business rules) in which the embedded system operates to get sufficient knowledge to follow its development.

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• First Turn;• Statement one – The metamodel is structured

correctly, but it is very simple. Embedded Systems has many others hardware devices.

• Statement two - It is necessary to include environment variables, control variables and hardware devices, such as storage and user interface.

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Metamodel Development ProcessRelation Cardinality Document – Second Turn

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Metamodel Development Process - MM4ES Metamodel – Second

Turn

Legend:Blue – Enterprise Level;Green – System Level;Yellow – Requirements Level;Orange – Context Level;

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Context

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REPES – Requirements Engineering Process for Embedded Systems

• Goal: Develop a particular requirements engineering process by providing roles, inputs, outputs, techniques and work products for correct requirements development and management for the scope of embedded systems.

• MM4ES– Domain Knowledge;– Structured knowledge;– Concepts classification;

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• REPES Tasks;– Elicitation;– Business modeling;– Environment description;– System description;– Requirements description;– Context description;– Validation;

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Related Works

• Braga (2015) presents a technique to incorporate storytelling into an existing model validation approach to improving communication between modelers and experts;

• Zha (2006) developed an Open Embedded System Model (OESM) to provide a standard representation for embedded systems (design solutions – software and hardware);

• Pereira (2014) developed a modeling tool based on three metamodels;

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Conclusion

• Requirements Engineering for Embedded Systems;• Systematic Literature Review;• Metamodel for Embedded Systems;– Representation and relationships between the

concepts (SLR and expert domain);– 41 concepts;– Domain understanding;– We classified the concepts into four levels of the

new requirements engineering process;

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Conclusion - Contributions

• i) the main results of a SLR; • ii) a knowledge-based metamodel for integrating

characteristics of the major concepts appearing in embedded systems;

• iii) a metamodel that can be used as input for model transformation if model-driven development is intended;

• iv) a glossary of embedded systems terminology; and • v) a sketch of our requirements engineering process

for embedded systems

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Future Works

• i) execute an evaluation of the MM4ES in industry, with others domain experts;

• ii) develop each level of the REPES process; and• iii) develop a CASE tool based on MM4ES.

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References

• A. Sousa, C. Agra, J. Melo, and F. Alencar, “Requirements elicitation and specification for embedded systems: a systematic literature review,” Requirements Engineering Workshop: Lima, Peru, 2015.

• B. Kitchenham, O. P. Brereton, D. Budgen, M. Turner, J. Bailey, and S. Linkman, “Systematic literature reviews in software engineering– a systematic literature review,” Information and software technology, vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 7–15, 2009.

• T. C. Pereira, “Bvccon-tool: A modelling tool to support a dynamic business process configuration approach,” Master’s thesis, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, 2014.

• B. F. Braga and J. P. A. Almeida, “Modeling stories for conceptual model assessment,” in International Conference on Conceptual Modeling. Springer, 2015, pp. 293–303.

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Thank You!

Petrolina - PE

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Towards a Metamodel for a Requirements Engineering

Process of Embedded Systems

Tarcísio Pereira, Deivson Albuquerque, Aêda Sousa, Fernanda Alencar and Jaelson Castro

Education

Towards a Metamodel for a Requirements Engineering Process of Embedded Systems