THE 5^th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON OBJECT-ORIENTED INFORMATION SYSTEMS

TUTORIALS

• Tutorial 1 : The CREWS Approach to Requirements Engineering: Scenarios, Scenes and Use Cases
• Tutorial 2 : A New Proposal for ODMG : a Temporal Extension
• Tutorial 3 : Beyond Objects: Unleashing the Power of Adaptive Agents

Tutorial 1 : The CREWS Approach to Requirements Engineering: Scenarios, Scenes and Use Cases

Instructors :

Abstract :

The European ESPRIT long-term research project CREWS (Cooperative Requirements Engineering With Scenarios) is concerned with systematic support for the usage and management of scenarios in the development of complex systems. The project has developed a classification scheme for scenario-based techniques which was then applied (a) to gain a structured overview of the state-of-the-art in the field, and (b) to structure a broad survey of current scenario practice in Europe. The tutorial summarises the result of both studies. It then gives an overview of the work undertaken in CREWS to remedy some of the identified issues. In particular it reports tools and techniques for: (i) elicitation and analysis of natural language descriptions of requirements and scenarios; (ii) elicitation of requirements from multi-media descriptions of current system usage; (iii) automatic generation and guided walkthrough of scenarios to validate system requirements, and; (iv) interactive and cooperative scenario animation to explore possible behaviours (or instance-level scenarios) of the future system allowed in a formal requirements specification. Software demonstrations of all four approaches will be available.

Objectives :

This tutorial has the following objectives:

• to make attendees aware of the significant research findings from the first two years of the CREWS project;

• to give attendees a basic understanding of the CREWS solutions to natural language parsing of use case descriptions, elicitation of requirements from current system scenes, systematic generation and walkthrough of scenarios, and scenario animation for formal requirement specifications;

• to demonstrate how a potential user of one or more CREWS solutions could adopt these solutions in their organisation;

• to make delegates aware of how CREWS is evaluating its research results and solutions in industrial contexts.

Instructors’ profiles

Matthias Jarke is Professor of Information Systems and chairman of the computer science department at Aachen University of Technology. His research interests focus on information systems support for design processes in business and engineering. Related to requirements engineering, he has been coordinator of three European ESPRIT projects, DAIDA, NATURE, and CREWS.

Colette Rolland is Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Paris-1 Panthéon/Sorbonne. Her research interests lie in the areas of information modelling, databases, temporal data modelling, object-oriented analysis and design, requirements engineering, design methodologies, development process modelling and CASE tools. She has extensive experience in participating to national and European research projects under the ESPRIT programme (projects TODOS, BUSINESS CLASS, F3, NATURE, TOOBIS, ELKD, ELEKTRA and CREWS) and conducting co-operative projects with industry. She is the French representative in IFIP TC8 on "Information Systems" and chairperson of the IFIP Working Group WG8.1.

Klaus Pohl is a senior researcher at Aachen University of Technology and vice-chair of the GI requirements engineering interest group. His research interests include frameworks for cooperative requirements engineering, change management, traceability and process centered engineering environments. He is/was work-group leader of the ESPRIT projects NATURE and CREWS.

Neil Maiden is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Human-Computer Interface Design, a research centre in City University's School of Informatics. He received a PhD in Computer Science from City University in 1992. His research interests include frameworks for requirements acquisition and negotiation, scenario-based systems development, component-based software engineering, requirements reuse and more effective transfer of academic research results into software engineering practice. Neil has numerous journal and conference publications. He has played an important research role in both the ESPRIT 'NATURE' and 'CREWS' long-term research requirements engineering projects. He is also co-founder and treasurer of the British Computer Society Requirements Engineering Specialist Group.

Patrick Heymans is a researcher at the University of Namur. His research interests are on elicitation and validation of requirements and on formal languages for specifying real-time, distributed systems.

Contact Point :

• (Back to the Top)
• Tutorial 1 : The CREWS Approach to Requirements Engineering: Scenarios, Scenes and Use Cases
• Tutorial 2 : A New Proposal for ODMG : a Temporal Extension
• Tutorial 3 : Beyond Objects: Unleashing the Power of Adaptive Agents

Tutorial 2 : A New Proposal for ODMG : a Temporal Extension

Instructors :

Abstract :

Even if the "year 2000" compliance is reached, are you sure that your systems managed time as you wish or as you expect ?

A classification of temporal requirements of existing or future information systems is proposed and the presentation will address the following issue : how standards (SZQL/T, TSQL2, ODMG) and existing products (DBMS, research prototypes) manage these temporal requirements ?

A general overview of the ODMG standard will be made by a member of this organisation.

Then, a full temporal extension of ODMG will be presented and exemplified. It will explain the temporal extension of the three main components which are the object model (OM), the Object Definition language (ODL) and the Object Query Language (OQL).

The temporal extensions to ODMG have been implemented on top of an ODMG compliant database; namely O2. The TOOBIS temporal extension involving the methodology and the temporal DBMS have been validated with two pilots applications of general scope, one in the management of treatment protocols for health applications and the other in implementing the management and distribution of Fresh Milk products. Consequently, demonstrations of the TODBMS prototype and the pilot applications will be done during the OOIS conference days.

Objectives :

Academic & industrial partners of the TOOBIS Esprit-20671 project join their effort to disseminate their time expertise gained during this project.

Time is an abstract notion used in every database applications or information systems. Nowadays, where the hottest topic in IT industry is the "Year 2000" issue, it is the time for TIME handling and management in Information Systems to get the attention it deserves. The objective of the seminar is to address the importance of TIME in Object Technology and Applications and explain how developing standards & existing DBMS are prepared to address temporal issues and offer temporal functionality for the development of current and future Business Information Systems ?

Instructors’ profiles

Zissis Palaskas is currently manager for the Research & Development Department at 01 Pliroforiki in Greece. He got his PhD in Computer Sciences at UMIST in 1989. His topics of interests are practices on database applications & Information System Development.

Yann Pollet is presently manager for the Advanced Information Processing Department at Matra Systèmes & Information in France. He is also an associate professor at the University of Rouen expert in databases technology, Analysis & Design Methodologies, and Project management.

Sophie Gamerman is Product manager for the Object Technology of Ardent Software. She was the technical representative of O2 Technology for the ODMG 2.0 and served as the editor of the Object Query Language Chapter.

Contact point :

• (Back to the Top)
• Tutorial 1 : The CREWS Approach to Requirements Engineering: Scenarios, Scenes and Use Cases
• Tutorial 2 : A New Proposal for ODMG : a Temporal Extension
• Tutorial 3 : Beyond Objects: Unleashing the Power of Adaptive Agents

Tutorial 3 : Beyond Objects: Unleashing the Power of Adaptive Agents

Instructor :

Abstract :

Now that objects have become the principal method to package the working software elements of a business, it's time to consider what the future holds for business systems that are completely built out of objects. This tutorial explores a future in which objects come alive as active and mobile agents inside the information networks of an enterprise. It proposes that we think beyond specific assigned roles of intelligent agents to think about entire systems of agents that adapt and evolve to meet larger goals. This tutorial surveys a wide range of agent-based systems, both natural and artificial, that are being studied within the emerging field of research known as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), and considers the lessons they offer for the engineering of autonomous object systems. These naturally decentralized systems offer an inherently parallel and scaleable approach to problem solving, along with a robustness of response to complex environments.

Objectives :

Participants will be encouraged to think about objects in entirely new ways, as active, autonomous elements that can integrate with the operation of a business.

Instructor profile :

James Odell is a consultant, writer, and educator in the areas of object orientation, business reengineering, and complex adaptive systems. Throughout most of his 25 year career, he has been heavily involved in developing better methods to manage, understand, and express system requirements. He was one of the early innovators of data and process modeling, and information engineering methodologies. Now, he is one of the first practical implementors of object-oriented modeling and implementation--consulting to major companies worldwide. He is a very experienced and highly-regarded educator and speaker. James Odell is the author of four books on OO and has also written numerous papers and articles on the subject. He is also the co-chair of the OMG's OO A&D Task Force.

Contact Point :

• (Back to the Top)
• Tutorial 1 : The CREWS Approach to Requirements Engineering: Scenarios, Scenes and Use Cases
• Tutorial 2 : A New Proposal for ODMG : a Temporal Extension
• Tutorial 3 : Beyond Objects: Unleashing the Power of Adaptive Agents