research-article

A requirements engineering approach for usability-driven DSL development

Authors:

Ankica Barišić,

Dominique Blouin,

Vasco Amaral, and

Miguel GoulãoAuthors Info & Claims

SLE 2017: Proceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering

October 2017

Pages 115 - 128

https://doi.org/10.1145/3136014.3136027

Published: 23 October 2017 Publication History

Abstract

There is currently a lack of Requirements Engineering (RE) approaches applied to, or supporting, the development of a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) taking into account the environment in which it is to be used. We present a model-based RE approach to support DSL development with a focus on usability concerns. RDAL is a RE fragment language that can be complemented with other languages to support RE and design. USE-ME is a model driven approach for DSLs usability evaluation which is integrable with a DSL development approach. We combine RDAL and a new DSL, named DSSL, that we created for the specification of DSL-based systems. Integrated with this combination we add USE-ME to support usability evaluation. This combination of existing languages and tools provides a comprehensive RE approach for DSL development. We illustrate the approach with the development of the Gyro DSL for programming robots.

Supplementary Material

Auxiliary Archive (sle17-sle17main35-aux.zip)

Download
607.40 KB

References

[1]

Ankica Barišić, Vasco Amaral, and Miguel Goulão. 2017. Usability Driven DSL development with USE-ME. Computer Languages, Systems and Structures (ComLan) (2017). (in press).

Digital Library

[2]

Ankica Barišić, Vasco Amaral, and Miguel Goulão. 2017. Usability Driven DSL development with USE-ME. Computer Languages, Systems and Structures (ComLan) ISBN 1477- (2017).

Digital Library

[3]

Ankica Barišić, Vasco Amaral, and Miguel Goulão. 2017. Usability Software Engineering - Modeling Environment (USE-ME 1.1). Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova da Lisboa (2017).

[4]

Ankica Barišić, Vasco Amaral, Miguel Goulão, and Bruno Barroca. 2011. How to reach a usable dsl? Moving toward a systematic evaluation. Electronic Communications of the EASST: 5th Int. Workshop on Multiparadigm Modeling (MPM 2011) 50 (2011), 13.

[5]

Ankica Barišić, Vasco Amaral, Miguel Goulão, and Bruno Barroca. 2011. Quality in use of domain-specific languages: a case study. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Evaluation and usability of programming languages and tools (PLATEAU) at SPLASH (2011), 65–72.

Digital Library

[6]

Alan F Blackwell, Margaret M Burnett, and Simon Peyton Jones. 2004. Champagne prototyping: A Research technique for early evaluation of complex end-user programming systems. In 2004 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human Centric Computing . IEEE, Rome, Italy, 47–54.

Digital Library

[7]

Dominique Blouin. 2017. Report on the Short Term Scientific Mission on ’Combining Modeling Languages to Support Usability-Driven DSL Development with USE-ME’. In Multi-Paradigm Modelling for CyberPhysical Systems (MPM4CPS) . European cooperation in science and technology (COST IC1404), 1–15.

[8]

Dominique Blouin and Holger Giese. 2016. Combining Requirements, Use Case Maps and AADL Models for Safety-Critical Systems Design. In 2016 42th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA) . IEEE, 266–274.

[9]

Dominique Blouin, Eric Senn, and Skander Turki. 2011. Defining an annex language to the architecture analysis and design language for requirements engineering activities support. In 2011 Model-Driven Requirements Engineering Workshop . IEEE, 11–20.

[10]

Hugo Bruneliere, Jokin Garcia Perez, Manuel Wimmer, and Jordi Cabot. 2015. {EMF} views: A view mechanism for integrating heterogeneous models. In International Conference on Conceptual Modeling. Springer, Stockholm, Sweden, 317–325.

[11]

Patrice Caire, Nicolas Genon, Patrick Heymans, and Daniel L Moody. 2013. Visual notation design 2.0: Towards user comprehensible requirements engineering notations. In RE’13. IEEE, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 115–124.

[12]

Krzysztof Czarnecki and Eisenecker Ulrich. 2000. Generative Programming: Methods, Tools, and Applications . Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, USA. 864 pages.

Digital Library

[13]

Patrícia Espada, Miguel Goulão, and João Araújo. 2013. A framework to evaluate complexity and completeness of KAOS goal models. In International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering . Springer, 562–577.

Digital Library

[14]

Catarina Gralha, João Araújo, and Miguel Goulão. 2015. Metrics for measuring complexity and completeness for social goal models. Information Systems 53 (2015), 346–362.

Digital Library

[15]

Javier Luis Cánovas Izquierdo and Jordi Cabot. 2013. Enabling the collaborative definition of DSMLs. In International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering . Springer, 272–287.

Digital Library

[16]

Javier Luis Cánovas Izquierdo and Jordi Cabot. 2016. Collaboro: a collaborative (meta) modeling tool. PeerJ Computer Science 2 (10 2016), e84.

[17]

R B Kieburtz, L McKinney, Jeffrey M Bell, J Hook, A Kotov, J Lewis, D P Oliva, T Sheard, I Smith, and L Walton. 1996. A software engineering experiment in software component generation. In Proceedings of the 18th international conference on Software engineering (ICSE’1996) . IEEE Computer Society, 552.

[18]

Dimitrios S Kolovos, Richard F Paige, Tim Kelly, and Fiona A C Polack. 2006. Requirements for domain-specific languages. In Proc. of ECOOP Workshop on Domain-Specific Program Development (DSPD), Vol. 2006. 1,4.

[19]

Tomaž Kosar, Nuno Oliveira, Marjan Mernik, Varanda João Maria Pereira, Matej Črepinšek, Cruz Daniela Da, and Rangel Pedro Henriques. 2010. Comparing general-purpose and domain-specific languages: An empirical study. Computer Science and Information Systems 7, 2 (2010), 247–264.

[20]

David L Lempia and Steven P Miller. 2009. Requirements engineering management findings report . Technical Report. Technical report DOT/FAA/AR-08/34, Federal Aviation Administration.

[21]

David L Lempia and Steven P Miller. 2009. Requirements engineering management handbook. National Technical Information Service (NTIS) 1 (2009).

[22]

Grzegorz Loniewski, Etienne Borde, Dominique Blouin, and Emilio Insfran. 2013. Model-Driven Requirements Engineering for Embedded Systems Development. In 2013 39th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications . IEEE, 236–243.

Digital Library

[23]

Raimundas Matulevičius and Patrick Heymans. 2007. Visually effective goal models using KAOS. In International Conference on Conceptual Modeling . Springer, 265–275.

[24]

Rui Monteiro, João Araújo, Vasco Amaral, Miguel Goulão, and Pedro Patrício. 2012. Model-driven development for requirements engineering: The case of goal-oriented approaches. In Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC), 2012 Eighth International Conference on the . IEEE, 75–84.

Digital Library

[25]

Daniel Moody. 2009. The “physics” of notations: toward a scientific basis for constructing visual notations in software engineering. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 35, 6 (2009), 756–779.

Digital Library

[26]

Daniel Moody and Jos van Hillegersberg. 2008. Evaluating the visual syntax of UML: An analysis of the cognitive effectiveness of the UML family of diagrams. In International Conference on Software Language Engineering . Springer, 16–34.

[27]

Daniel L Moody, Patrick Heymans, and Raimundas Matulevičius. 2010. Visual syntax does matter: improving the cognitive effectiveness of the i* visual notation. Requirements Engineering 15, 2 (2010), 141–175.

Digital Library

[28]

David Lorge Parnas and Jan Madey. 1995. Functional documents for computer systems. Science of Computer Programming 25, 1 (10 1995), 41–61.

[29]

Gerardo Cepeda Porras and Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc. 2010. An empirical study on the efficiency of different design pattern representations in UML class diagrams. Empirical Software Engineering 15, 5 (2010), 493–522.

Digital Library

[30]

Jesús Sánchez-Cuadrado, Juan De Lara, and Esther Guerra. 2012. Bottom-up meta-modelling: An interactive approach. In MODELS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), Robert B. France, Jürgen Kazmeier, Ruth Breu, and Colin Atkinson (Eds.), Vol. 7590 LNCS. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 3–19.

[31]

Mafalda Santos, Catarina Gralha, Miguel Goulao, João Araújo, Ana Moreira, and Joao Cambeiro. 2016. What is the impact of bad layout in the understandability of social goal models?. In Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), 2016 IEEE 24th International . IEEE, 206–215.

[32]

Bonita Sharif and Jonathan I Maletic. 2010. An eye tracking study on the effects of layout in understanding the role of design patterns. In Software Maintenance (ICSM), 2010 IEEE International Conference on . IEEE, 1–10.

Digital Library

[33]

Robert Tairas, Marjan Mernik, and Jeff Gray. 2008. Using ontologies in the domain analysis of domain-specific languages. In International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems . 332– 342.

[34]

Axel Van Lamsweerde and Emmanuel Letier. 2004. From object orientation to goal orientation: A paradigm shift for requirements engineering. In Radical Innovations of Software and Systems Engineering in the Future. Springer, 325–340.

[35]

Rini Van Solingen, Vic Basili, Gianluigi Caldiera, and H Dieter Rombach. 2002. Goal question metric (GQM) approach. Encyclopedia of Software Engineering (2002).

Digital Library

[36]

Maria Jose Villanueva, Francisco Valverde, and Oscar Pastor. 2014. Involving end-users in the design of a domain-specific language for the genetic domain. In Information System Development. Springer, 99–110.

[37]

Markus Völter, Christian Dietrich, Birgit Engelmann, Mats Helander, Lennart Kats, Eelco Visser, and Wachsmuth. 2013. DSL Engineering: Designing, Implementing and Using Domain-Specific Languages . CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 558 pages.

[38]

Tobias Walter, Fernando Silva Parreiras, and Steffen Staab. 2009. OntoDSL: An Ontology-Based Framework for Domain-Specific Languages. In Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems SE - 32 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), Andy Schürr and Bran Selic (Eds.), Vol. 5795. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 408–422.

[39]

Fernando Wanderley, Denis Silva da Silveira, João Araujo, and Maria Lencastre. 2012. Generating feature model from creative requirements using model driven design. In Proceedings of the 16th International Software Product Line Conference-Volume 2 . ACM, 18–25.

Digital Library

Cited By

Barišić AWinckler M(2024)Towards User Profile Meta-OntologyDesign for Equality and Justice10.1007/978-3-031-61688-4_6(59-79)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-61688-4_6
Shahin MHussain WNurwidyantoro APerera HShams RGrundy JWhittle J(2022)Operationalizing Human Values in Software Engineering: A SurveyIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.319097510(75269-75295)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3190975
Barišić AMurphy G(2017)Framework support for usability evaluation of domain-specific languagesProceedings Companion of the 2017 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity10.1145/3135932.3135953(16-18)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3135932.3135953

Index Terms

A requirements engineering approach for usability-driven DSL development
1. Software and its engineering

Recommendations

A DSL for requirements in the context of a seamless approach
ASE '18: Proceedings of the 33rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

Reducing the lack of consistency between requirements and the system that should satisfy these requirements is one of the major issue in Requirement Engineering (RE). The objective of my thesis work is to propose a seamless approach, allowing users to ...
Read More
Usability driven DSL development with USE-ME

A conceptual framework, called USE-ME, which supports usability evaluations during the DSL development is proposed.The paper presents the models of the information that must be traced during the different steps of the DSL engineering process.A prototype ...
Read More
A pattern-based approach to DSL development
SPLASH '11 Workshops: Proceedings of the compilation of the co-located workshops on DSM'11, TMC'11, AGERE! 2011, AOOPES'11, NEAT'11, & VMIL'11

Tool support for the development of Domain-specific Languages (DSLs) is continuously increasing. This reduces implementation effort for DSLs and enables the development of rather complex languages within reasonable amounts of time. However, the lack of ...
Read More

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SLE 2017: Proceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering

October 2017

267 pages

ISBN:9781450355254

DOI:10.1145/3136014

General Chair:
Benoit Combemale
University of Rennes 1, France
,
Program Chairs:
Marjan Mernik
University of Maribor, Slovenia
,
Bernhard Rumpe
RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGPLAN: ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages

In-Cooperation

SIGAda: ACM Special Interest Group on Ada Programming Language

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 23 October 2017

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Badges

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

European Cooperation in Science and Technology
Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
NOVA LINCS Research Laboratory

Conference

SPLASH '17

Sponsor:

SIGPLAN

SPLASH '17: Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity

October 23 - 24, 2017

BC, Vancouver, Canada

Upcoming Conference

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

3
Total Citations
View Citations
236
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)14
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Barišić AWinckler M(2024)Towards User Profile Meta-OntologyDesign for Equality and Justice10.1007/978-3-031-61688-4_6(59-79)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-61688-4_6
Shahin MHussain WNurwidyantoro APerera HShams RGrundy JWhittle J(2022)Operationalizing Human Values in Software Engineering: A SurveyIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.319097510(75269-75295)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3190975
Barišić AMurphy G(2017)Framework support for usability evaluation of domain-specific languagesProceedings Companion of the 2017 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity10.1145/3135932.3135953(16-18)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3135932.3135953

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents