Jason's Thesis Plan

• This document is intended to be my plan in order to pump out a thesis before 2082.

Title

• Round-Trip Requirements Engineering: Automatic Synchronization of Textual Use Cases with Graphical Use Case Maps

Discussion

• Currently, this something that I could accomplish, but does not match Daniel's needs nor encompass everything that I have done (and plan on doing) during my masters.
• I have already done UC->UCM and am interested in doing UCM->UC. However, the whole "automatic synchronization" part doesn't interest me that much anymore for various reasons.
  • I don't want to do UI-heavy projects. Lots of effort is required to get the right result, and it usually is not that difficult, just a pain. I want to do resolve algorithmically complex problems (transformations, refactoring).
  • I'd like to automatically synchronize UCEd and jUCMNav, but have come to realize that their purposes are too different. UCEd has a notion of time and the tool is based on state machines while jUCMNav does not. [whole other discussion here]
• I'd like to drop the automatic synchronization part and have automatic transformation instead. I insist on automatic (or should it be automated?) because I don't to build UIs that help users resolve problems.
• The work that seems relevant (see next section) brings up alternate title ideas:
  1. Round-Trip Requirements Engineering: Use Case Map Analysis Enhancements
     • Doesn't make sense with RTRE, a part that I want in the title. Vague (doesn't say what is done) while still too specific (didn't only do analysis enhancements)
  2. Round-Trip Requirements Engineering: Bridging the gap between various requirements engineering notations
     • Sounds a bit pompous. Vague & possibly too large.
  3. Round-Trip Requirements Engineering: Towards tighter integration of Use Case Maps and other requirements engineering notations
     • What do you think? I don't like it but I'm running out of ideas.

Draft of Work

Done (at least partially)

• Addition of Import / Export Wizard.
• Creation of UCEd Import
• Addition of scenarios to jUCMNav
  • Focus on new features:
    • New data types: integers/enumerations
    • Inclusion / Inheritance (?)
    • Dual syntax: SDL / Java
    • Traversal parameters:
      • Determinism vs Non-determinism
      • Patient vs Impatient
      • Concurrency parameters

To Be Completed

• Introduce concurrency in traversal algorithm
• jUCMNav Scenarios / Strategies: Extension point
• Create of Use Case Export (to UCEd / HTML Report)
• Integration of MSC viewer into jUCMNav
• Export to MSC

Ideas

• Show what is not covered by any scenarios
• Copy-paste jucmnav to jucmnav
• More integration with GRL, UCM traversal depends on GRL results.
• Reverse-engineer of Use Case Diagram from UCM set
• More import/export ... focus on Eclipse UML plugins that are available
• TODO

Review of literature

• Areas
  1. UCM <-> other notation
  2. Use Cases
  3. Daniel Amyot
  4. Lionel C. Briand
  5. UML
  6. MSC (SDL?)
  7. Activity Diagrams vs MSC

Read

To read

Timeline

• TODO
• Need to define priorities, what could be cut if not enough time.
  1. UCM <-> UML Sequence Diagram
  2. UCM <-> Use Case Diagram
  3. What is not covered by any scenario? (although I don't think it would take much time)
  4. Traversal depends on GRL links (although I don't think it would take much time)

Thesis Outline (Draft)

1. 1. Introduction to UCMs and jUCMNav as of September 2005
   2. Tool enhancements since
      1. Import/Export
      2. GRL & Strategies
      3. Scenarios
   3. New analysis capabilities
      1. New scenario data model
      2. New scenario inclusion/inheritance
      3. Traversal depends on GRL links
   4. A world of possibilities, source&target notations
      1. Notation 1 : Use Cases
         • Why? Very close to UCMs, very widely used.
         • Tool: UCEd to avoid having to implement NLP.
         • Transformations by example (bi-directional), illustrate difficulties
         • Limitations
      2. Notation 2: MSCs
         • Why? URN / SDL stardardized by ITU-T.
         • Tool: MSC viewer eclipse plugin. Is there anything to create MSCs other than Tau?
         • Transformations by example (bi-directional ?) , illustrate difficulties
         • Limitations
      3. Notation 3: UML Sequence Diagram
         • Why? UML widely used. Incrementally not very difficult to add (or am I mistaken?)
         • Tool: TBD. (UML Eclipse Plugin)
         • Transformations by example (bi-directional?), illustrate difficulties
         • Limitations
      4. Notation 4: UML Use Case Diagram * Why? Brings us back to our first notation, but at a level of abstraction above it. Often a missing piece of information when viewing UCM models. * Tool: same as 3, ideally well integrated into jUCMNav. * Transformations by example (bi-directional?), illustrate difficulties * Limitations
   5. Future Work
   6. Conclusion

Discussions

• We need to discuss scenario inclusion versus inheritance.
• We need to discuss what are the issues when exporting to MSC/sequence diagram directly versus intermediate language. Need to discuss what is hard when doing this.