Arnon Sturm | Ben Gurion University of the Negev (original) (raw)

Papers by Arnon Sturm

Proceedings of the International Conference on Web Intelligence, 2017

Techniques originating from the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) areas h... more Techniques originating from the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) areas have extensively been applied to develop intelligent and pervasive systems such as assistive monitoring, feedback in telerehabilitation, energy management, and negotiation. Those application domains particularly include three major characteristics: intelligence, autonomy and real-time behavior. Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are one of the major technological paradigms that are used to implement such systems. However, they mainly address the first two characteristics, but miss to comply with strict timing constraints. The timing compliance is crucial for safety-critical applications operating in domains such as healthcare and automotive. The main reasons for this lack of real-time satisfiability in MAS originate from current theories, standards, and technological implementations. In particular, internal agent schedulers, communication middlewares, and negotiation protocols have been identified as co-factors inhibiting the real-time compliance. This paper provides an analysis of such MAS components and pave the road for achieving the MAS compliance with strict timing constraints, thus fostering reliability and predictability.

This dataset includes the materials that were utilized in an experiment regarding the manual deri... more This dataset includes the materials that were utilized in an experiment regarding the manual derivation of a structural/static conceptual model from either use cases or user stories. Besides the user stories and the use cases, listed in the form that was given to the students, we also provide the spreadsheet that we used to run our statistical analysis. For more information on the paper, please see the paper Conceptualizing Requirements using User Stories and Use Cases: A Controlled Experiment, by Fabiano Dalpiaz and Arnon Sturm, published at the 26th International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality, 2020.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2021

Software and Systems Modeling, Apr 6, 2023

Journal of Knowledge Management, Apr 3, 2017

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on research that aims to make knowledge, and in pa... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on research that aims to make knowledge, and in particular know-how, more easily accessible to both academic and industrial communities, as well as to the general public. The paper proposes a novel approach to map out know-how information, so all knowledge stakeholders are able to contribute to the knowledge and expertise accumulation, as well as using that knowledge for research and applying expertise to address problems. Design/methodology/approach This research followed a design science approach in which mapping of the know-how information was done by the research team and then tested with graduate students. During this research, the mapping approach was continuously evaluated and refined, and mapping guidelines and a prototype tool were developed. Findings Following an evaluation with graduate students, it was found that the know-how maps produced were easy to follow, allowed continuous evolution, facilitated easy modification through provided modularity capabilities, further supported reasoning about know-how and overall provided adequate expressiveness. Furthermore, we applied the approach with various domains and found that it was a good fit for its purpose across different knowledge domains. Practical implications This paper argues that mapping out know-how within research and industry communities can further improve resource (knowledge) utilization, reduce the phenomena of “re-inventing the wheel” and further create linkage across communities. Originality/value With the qualities mentioned above, know-how maps can both ease and support the increase of access to expert knowledge to various communities, and thus, promote re-use and expansion of knowledge for various purposes. Having an explicit representation of know-how further encourages innovation, as knowledge from various domains can be mapped, searched and reasoned, and gaps can be identified and filled.

Software and Systems Modeling, Sep 12, 2018

Information and software systems development is rapidly changing due to exponential technology de... more Information and software systems development is rapidly changing due to exponential technology development. This acceleration is also impacting other technology or engineering domains. Thus, there is a need to identify problems and their solutions, and to reason about new options so as to better arrive at the right decision of which technology or solution should be adopted among various alternatives. In this paper, we argue that such know-how information can be mapped, to ease such tasks. In particular, we examine the hypothesis that know-how mapping, using an approach we call Means-Ends Map (ME-MAP), facilitates analysis in technological domains. We design a controlled experiment to assess the comprehension of ME maps with that of textual summaries in two different domains. We find that subjects exploring a domain using ME maps were able to better identify solutions and better understand the tradeoffs among alternative solutions. Furthermore, these subjects gained that understanding faster compared to those using textual summaries.

Lecture notes in business information processing, 2021

Springer eBooks, 2020

[Context and motivation] Notations for expressing requirements are often proposed without explici... more [Context and motivation] Notations for expressing requirements are often proposed without explicit consideration of their suitability for specific tasks. Consequently, practitioners may choose a sub-optimal notation, thereby affecting task performance. [Question/problem] We investigate the adequacy of two well-known notations: use cases and user stories, as a starting point for the manual derivation of a static conceptual model. In particular, we examine the completeness and correctness of the derived conceptual model. [Principal ideas/results] We conducted a two-factor, two-treatment controlled experiment with 118 subjects. The results indicate that for deriving conceptual models, user stories fit better than use cases. It seems that the repetitions in user stories and their conciseness contribute to these results. [Contribution] The paper calls for evaluating requirements notations in the context of various requirements engineering tasks and for providing evidence regarding the aspects that need to be taken into account when selecting a requirement notation.

IGI Global eBooks, Jan 18, 2011

Engagement has been shown to contribute to students' success. We used an NSSE-like survey and... more Engagement has been shown to contribute to students' success. We used an NSSE-like survey and interviews to examine engagement of students registered in software engineering and information system engineering at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). The survey showed BGU students had gener-ally lower engagement in comparison to US students except for in collaborative learning. BGU students lean towards perceiving their studies as a means for professional success rather than for traditional academic success. We attribute the differ-ences between the students and their US counterparts to dif-ferences in culture and the age of digital media that allows for multiple ways of learning beyond the university.

Springer eBooks, Jun 24, 2014

With this book, Onn Shehory and Arnon Sturm, together with further contributors, introduce the re... more With this book, Onn Shehory and Arnon Sturm, together with further contributors, introduce the reader to various facets of agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE). They provide a selected collection of state-of-the-art findings, which combines research from information systems, artificial intelligence, distributed systems and software engineering and covers essential development aspects of agent-based systems. The book chapters are organized into five parts. The first part introduces the AOSE domain in general, including introduction to agents and the peculiarities of software engineering for developing MAS. The second part describes general aspects of AOSE, like architectural models, design patterns and communication. Next, part three discusses AOSE methodologies and associated research directions and elaborates on Prometheus, O-MaSE and INGENIAS. Part four then addresses agent-oriented programming languages. Finally, the fifth part presents studies related to the implementation of agents and multi-agent systems. The book not only provides a comprehensive review of design approaches for specifying agent-based systems, but also covers implementation aspects such as communication, standards and tools and environments for developing agent-based systems. It is thus of interest to researchers, practitioners and students who are interested in exploring the agent paradigm for developing software systems.

Lecture notes in business information processing, 2018

During the last decade, new database solutions and technologies have emerged. These were develope... more During the last decade, new database solutions and technologies have emerged. These were developed in order to facilitate the new types of applications and requirements. However, these new improvements also affected the desired properties existing in traditional databases (i.e., relational). Thus, there is a need to better understand the tradeoffs among the various solutions and to support such analysis with design and modeling techniques. In this paper, we review database design approaches and explore the requirements for these.

SN computer science, Jan 9, 2023

Data & Knowledge Engineering

Proceedings of the 13th ACM International Workshop on Context-Oriented Programming and Advanced Modularity, 2021

Context-aware systems keep on emerging in all of our daily activities. To cope with this new situ... more Context-aware systems keep on emerging in all of our daily activities. To cope with this new situation, programming languages were extended to support the notion of context. Although context-oriented programming languages exist for over 15 years, they were tested for their suitability in developing context-aware systems only to a limited extent. In this paper, we propose a framework for analyzing context-oriented languages from that viewpoint. In this framework, we refer to context definition and activation, reasoning capabilities, process aspects of how to work with the suggested extension, and pragmatic considerations. To demonstrate the use of the framework, we applied it to a relatively new context-oriented programming paradigm, namely context-oriented behavioral programming. The proposed framework can support users of context-oriented programming languages in deciding on the most fitted language for their purpose. Developers of context-oriented programming languages can also use the framework to improve such languages and their supporting tools.

2017 11th International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS), 2017

Know-how deals with the knowledge of how to achieve objectives effectively and efficiently. Mappi... more Know-how deals with the knowledge of how to achieve objectives effectively and efficiently. Mapping this knowledge facilitates and encourages understanding domains, learning about problems and solutions, analyzing the trade-offs among these, identifying potential gaps and places for improvements, and reasoning about the existing knowledge. To address these goals we developed a know-how mapping approach - ME-MAP and introduced its abstract and concrete syntax. This paper further equips the modeling/mapping language of the ME-MAP approach with formal semantics and presents related analysis and reasoning tasks, elaborate on these tasks and explain their rationale. These tasks ensure keeping precise, consistent and correct models, enable the extraction of useful knowledge from the model and by this provide an inclusive support to the knowledge stakeholders.

Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality, 2022

This file contains the material related to the paper "Guided Derivation of Conceptual Models... more This file contains the material related to the paper "Guided Derivation of Conceptual Models from User Stories: A Controlled Experiment." It consists of the experiment forms (including the guidelines), the gold standard solutions, the results, and the analysis code.

This online appendix provides the materials of an experiment regarding the performance of individ... more This online appendix provides the materials of an experiment regarding the performance of individual subjects (24 students) in the extraction of conceptual models from a specification expressed: [IV1] as user stories or use cases [IV2] for one of three types of fictitious systems: hospital management system, urban traffic simulator, and international football association portal We measure the performance in terms of validity (DV1) and completeness (DV2) against models that were created by domain experts (the three authors of the paper and of this online appendix) from each of the specifications. The materials include The description of the three systems (folder System Descriptions) An Excel spreadsheet that includes raw data, charts, and statistical results The guidelines that the authors used in assessing the quality of the subjects' models against the expert models For each student who participated in the experiment and gave consent, The specification, either via user stories ...