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Towards an Ontology-Based Approach for Eliciting Possible Solutions to Non-Functional Requirements

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Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11483))

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Abstract

Requirements Engineering plays a crucial role in the software development process. Many works have pointed out that Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) are critical to the quality of software systems. NFRs, also known as quality requirements, can be difficult to elicit due to their subjective diversity nature. In this paper, we introduce the QR Framework which uses an ontology-based approach to support the collection of knowledge on possible solutions to implement NFRs, semi-automatically connecting related NFRs. Preliminary search mechanisms are provided in a tool to facilitate the identification of possible solutions to an NFR and their related consequences to other solutions and/or other NFRs. To evaluate whether our approach aids eliciting NFRs, we conducted a controlled experiment performing a software development scenario. Our results suggest that reusing NFR knowledge can drive software engineers to obtain a closer to complete set of possible solutions to address quality concerns.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We use the term satisfice in the same way as it is used in the NFR Framework [2] denoting that an NFR is expected to be satisfied within acceptable limits.

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Acknowledgment

This research was partially supported by NSERC. We would also like to thank the valuable comments received from the reviewers for improving the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Technology, York University, Toronto, Canada

    Rodrigo Veleda & Luiz Marcio Cysneiros

Authors
  1. Rodrigo Veleda
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  2. Luiz Marcio Cysneiros
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luiz Marcio Cysneiros .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Paolo Giorgini

  2. University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Barbara Weber

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Veleda, R., Cysneiros, L.M. (2019). Towards an Ontology-Based Approach for Eliciting Possible Solutions to Non-Functional Requirements. In: Giorgini, P., Weber, B. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11483. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21290-2_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21290-2_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21289-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21290-2

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