Runtime Goal Models

Goal models capture stakeholder requirements for a system-to-be, but also circumscribe a space of alternative specifications for fulfilling these requirements. Recent proposals for self-adaptive software systems rely on variants of goal models to support monitoring and adaptation functions. In such cases, goal models serve as mechanisms in terms of which systems reflect upon their requirements during their operation. We argue that existing proposals for using goal models at runtime are using design artifacts for purposes they were not intended, i.e., for reasoning about runtime system behavior. In this paper, we propose a conceptual distinction between Design-time Goal Models (DGMs)—used to design a system—and Runtime Goal Models (RGMs)—used to analyze a system’s runtime behavior with respect to its requirements. RGMs extend DGMs with additional state, behavioral and historical information about the fulfillment of goals. We propose a syntactic structure for RGMs, a method for deriving them from DGMs, and runtime algorithms that support their monitoring. Keywords—Runtime goal models; Requirements at runtime; Goal reasoning; Self-adaptive systems.

[1]  Henry A. Kautz.  A formal theory of plan recognition , 1987 .

[2]  William N. Robinson.  A requirements monitoring framework for enterprise systems , 2005, Requirements Engineering.

[3]  John Mylopoulos,et al.  Modeling Domain Variability in Requirements Engineering with Contexts , 2009, ER.

[4]  Jeff Magee,et al.  From goals to components: a combined approach to self-management , 2008, SEAMS '08.

[5]  G. Spanoudakis,et al.  A Framework for Requirements Monitoring of Service Based Systems , 2004 .

[6]  John Mylopoulos,et al.  Integrating Preferences into Goal Models for Requirements Engineering , 2010, 2010 18th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference.

[7]  Philippe Massonet,et al.  Goal-directed elaboration of requirements for a meeting scheduler: problems and lessons learnt , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (RE'95).

[8]  John Mylopoulos,et al.  An Architecture for Requirements-Driven Self-reconfiguration , 2009, CAiSE.

[9]  Stephen Fickas,et al.  Goal-Directed Requirements Acquisition , 1993, Sci. Comput. Program..

[10]  Nelly Bencomo,et al.  Requirements reflection: requirements as runtime entities , 2010, 2010 ACM/IEEE 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering.

[11]  Don Cohen,et al.  Automatic Monitoring of Software Requirements , 1997, Proceedings of the (19th) International Conference on Software Engineering.

[12]  Yijun Yu,et al.  Monitoring and diagnosing software requirements , 2009, Automated Software Engineering.

[13]  Raian Ali,et al.  Requirements Evolution: From Assumptions to Reality , 2011, BMMDS/EMMSAD.

[14]  Eric Yu,et al.  Modeling Strategic Relationships for Process Reengineering , 1995, Social Modeling for Requirements Engineering.

[15]  Anna Perini,et al.  Towards goal-oriented development of self-adaptive systems , 2008, SEAMS '08.

[16]  Jeff Magee,et al.  Self-Managed Systems: an Architectural Challenge , 2007, Future of Software Engineering (FOSE '07).

[17]  Takeo Kanade,et al.  Software Engineering for Self-Adaptive Systems II , 2013, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[18]  Rogério de Lemos,et al.  Software Engineering for Self-Adaptive Systems [outcome of a Dagstuhl Seminar] , 2009, Software Engineering for Self-Adaptive Systems.

[19]  Alexei Lapouchnian,et al.  Modeling Mental States in Agent-Oriented Requirements Engineering , 2006, CAiSE.

[20]  Nelly Bencomo,et al.  Towards requirements aware systems: Run-time resolution of design-time assumptions , 2011, 2011 26th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2011).

[21]  John Mylopoulos,et al.  Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering , 2000, International Series in Software Engineering.

[22]  Dalal Alrajeh,et al.  Deriving non-Zeno behaviour models from goal models using ILP , 2009, Formal Aspects of Computing.

[23]  Raian Ali,et al.  A Goal Modeling Framework for Self-contextualizable Software , 2009, BMMDS/EMMSAD.

[24]  George Spanoudakis,et al.  A framework for requirents monitoring of service based systems , 2004, ICSOC '04.

[25]  Scott A. DeLoach,et al.  A Goal Model for Adaptive Complex Systems , 2009 .

[26]  Heather Goldsby,et al.  Goal-Based Modeling of Dynamically Adaptive System Requirements , 2008, 15th Annual IEEE International Conference and Workshop on the Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ecbs 2008).

[27]  Yijun Yu,et al.  From Goals to High-Variability Software Design , 2008, ISMIS.

[28]  John Mylopoulos,et al.  Adaptive socio-technical systems: a requirements-based approach , 2011, Requirements Engineering.

[29]  John Mylopoulos,et al.  Awareness requirements for adaptive systems , 2011, SEAMS '11.

[30]  Martin S. Feather,et al.  Requirements monitoring in dynamic environments , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (RE'95).

[31]  Luciano Baresi,et al.  Fuzzy Goals for Requirements-Driven Adaptation , 2010, 2010 18th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference.

[32]  John Mylopoulos,et al.  From object-oriented to goal-oriented requirements analysis , 1999, CACM.

[33]  Marsha Chechik,et al.  Behaviour Model Synthesis from Properties and Scenarios , 2007, 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'07).

[34]  Eric S. K. Yu,et al.  Comparison and evaluation of goal-oriented satisfaction analysis techniques , 2013, Requirements Engineering.

[35]  Julio Cesar Sampaio do Prado Leite,et al.  On Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering , 2009, Conceptual Modeling: Foundations and Applications.

[36]  John Mylopoulos,et al.  Reasoning with Goal Models , 2002, ER.

[37]  Sebastián Uchitel,et al.  Deriving event-based transition systems from goal-oriented requirements models , 2008, Automated Software Engineering.

[38]  Anna Perini,et al.  Operational semantics of goal models in adaptive agents , 2009, AAMAS.

[39]  Nelly Bencomo,et al.  A Goal-Based Modeling Approach to Develop Requirements of an Adaptive System with Environmental Uncertainty , 2009, MoDELS.

[40]  M.S. Feather,et al.  Reconciling system requirements and runtime behavior , 1998, Proceedings Ninth International Workshop on Software Specification and Design.