Silvia Abrahao | Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (original) (raw)
Papers by Silvia Abrahao
This paper presents the Object-Oriented Web-Solutions Modeling approach (OOWS), which provides me... more This paper presents the Object-Oriented Web-Solutions Modeling approach (OOWS), which provides mechanisms to deal with the development of hypermedia information systems and e-commerce applications in web environments. It is proposed as an extension of an object-oriented method for automatic code generation based on conceptual models (OO-Method). The main contribution of this work is the introduction of a navigational model that is completely embedded in the process of conceptual modeling, to specify navigational features as a main part of what is conventionally specified during the conceptual modeling process. This navigational model provides abstraction primitives that allow to capture and represent navigational semantics in a precise way. We show how to put into practice the OOWS approach through a successful practical example developed within the context of e-commerce applications.
Recently, a number of methods and techniques for assessing the quality of software product lines ... more Recently, a number of methods and techniques for assessing the quality of software product lines have been proposed. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no study which summarizes all the existing evidence about them. This paper presents a systematic review that investigates what methods and techniques have been employed (in the last 10 years) to evaluate the quality of software product lines and how they were employed. A total of 39 research papers have been reviewed from an initial set of 1388 papers. The results show that 25% of the papers reported evaluations at the Design phase of the Domain Engineering phase. The most widely used mechanism for modeling quality attributes was extended feature models and the most evaluated artifact was the base architecture. In addition, the results of the review have identified several research gaps. Specifically, 77% of the papers employed case studies as a "proof of concept" whereas 23% of the papers did not perform any type of validation. Our results are particularly relevant in positioning new research activities and in the selection of quality evaluation methods or techniques that best fit a given purpose.
Nowadays, several approaches for developing web applications have been proposed in the literature... more Nowadays, several approaches for developing web applications have been proposed in the literature. Most of them extend existing object-oriented conceptual modeling methods, incorporating new constructors in order to model the navigational structure and the content of web applications. Such new constructors are commonly represented in a Navigational Model. While navigational models constitute the backbone of web application design, their quality has a great impact on the quality of the final product which is actually implemented and delivered. In this paper, we discuss a set of metrics for navigational models that has been proposed for analyzing the quality of web applications in terms of size and structural complexity. These metrics were defined and validated using a formal framework (DISTANCE) for software measure construction that satisfies the measurement needs of empirical software engineering research. Some experimental studies have shown that complexity affects the ability to understand and maintain conceptual models. In order to prove this, we also made a controlled experiment to observe how the proposed metrics can be used as early maintainability indicators.
International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, 2003
Abstract: Today, more and more Web sites and Applications (WebApps) are becoming mission-critical... more Abstract: Today, more and more Web sites and Applications (WebApps) are becoming mission-critical systems. Measures of functional size are a prerequisite to successful quantitative management of software projects. However, the nature of the web has recently imposed ...
Information & Software Technology, 2011
In recent years, many Usability Evaluation Methods (UEMs) have been employed to evaluate Web appl... more In recent years, many Usability Evaluation Methods (UEMs) have been employed to evaluate Web applications. However, many of these applications still do not meet most customers' usability expectations and many companies have folded as a result of not considering Web usability issues. No studies currently exist with regard to either the use of usability evaluation methods for the Web or the benefits they bring.
Model-driven architecture (MDA) has recently attracted the interest of both the research communit... more Model-driven architecture (MDA) has recently attracted the interest of both the research community and industry corporations. It specifies an automated process for developing interactive applications from high-level models to code generation. This approach can play a key role in the fields of software engineering (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI). Although there are some MDA-compliant methods for developing user interfaces, none of them explicitly integrates usability engineering with user interface engineering. This chapter addresses this issue by showing how the usability of user interfaces that are generated automatically by an industrial MDA-compliant CASE tool can be assessed. The goal is to investigate whether MDA-compliant methods improve software usability through model transformations. To accomplish this, two usability evaluations were conducted in the code model (final user interface). Results showed that the usability problems identified at this level provide valuable feedback on the improvement of platform-independent models (PIM) and platform-specific models (PSM) supporting the notion of usability produced by construction.
This paper describes further analysis on the evaluation of OO-method function points for the Web ... more This paper describes further analysis on the evaluation of OO-method function points for the Web (OOmFPWeb), a functional size measurement method for Web applications. OOmFPWeb was evaluated using a range of performance-based and perception-based variables including productivity, reproducibility, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and intention to use. The evaluation was guided by an evaluation model for information systems design
The building of Web-based systems has often been ad hoc, lacking systematic development approache... more The building of Web-based systems has often been ad hoc, lacking systematic development approaches, and quality control and assurance processes. In order to avoid the Web crisis, urge Web Engineering approaches for eliciting, developing and maintaining Web sites and Applications (WebApps) of required quality within budgetary constrains. To bridge this gap, one of our current concerns is assessing the quality of operative WebApps considering both functional and nonfunctional requirements. We claim that an operative site should be assessed not only from the quality perspective of the nonfunctional requirements, but also from the functional viewpoint like informational and navigational architecture. WebFP_QEM is a methodology that allows capturing business and application goals for different audiences, specifying informational and navigational models, specifying quality models and assessment criteria, and analyzing outcomes in order to give recommendations for improvements. Furthermore, if a change is suggested based on a recommendation document, the estimation of the maintenance cost can be done using a Web-centered Function Points measure.
Abstract. The demand for web applications that take into account the different needs and interest... more Abstract. The demand for web applications that take into account the different needs and interests of the users has been increasing. Personal-ization can involve a wide-range of approaches and techniques to design the end-user experience. This paper discusses the use of ...
The goal of this paper is to investigate which requirements engineering techniques have been appl... more The goal of this paper is to investigate which requirements engineering techniques have been applied in the development of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) and how they were applied. We performed a systematic review of 58 of a total of 835 papers found in scientific digital libraries. The results show that most of the proposals for dealing with requirements (79%) use already defined methods or techniques from other software development paradigms and that 69% of these techniques are based on the goal-oriented paradigm. A total of 95% of the reviewed papers focus on techniques for analyzing requirements, and only 45% of them explicitly consider some type of elicitation technique. Finally, only 5% of the papers give some empirical evidence about the effectiveness of their approaches by conducting empirical studies. The results of our study are particularly important in the determination of current research activities in Requirements Engineering for MAS and in the identification of research gaps for further investigation.
In this article we thoroughly discuss conceptual and navigational modeling and query issues for r... more In this article we thoroughly discuss conceptual and navigational modeling and query issues for repositories of metrics and their cataloging system by exploiting as well the power of the semantic web approach. This environment can finally allow tools, evaluators and other stakeholders to have service and consultation mechanisms starting from a sound specification of the entity type, the attribute definition and motivation, the metric definition as well as the measure type, unit, scale type, data collection instruments, protocols, among other metadata.
1Department of Information Systems and Computation Valencia University of Technology Camino de Ve... more 1Department of Information Systems and Computation Valencia University of Technology Camino de Vera, s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain {sabrahao, opastor}@dsic.upv.es ... 2Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Ghent University Hoveniersberg 24, 9000 Ghent, Belgium ...
Early software size estimation is essential for good project management. Although several proposa... more Early software size estimation is essential for good project management. Although several proposals to estimate software size from requirement specifications exist, most of them have not been properly defined or automated. This paper presents the design and automation of a measurement procedure (ReqPoints) to estimate the size of object-oriented software projects from a requirements specification. The procedure is based on a requirements engineering approach that provides a MDA framework for requirements specification and model transformations to obtain the architecture of UML models. Specifically, a set of measurement rules is defined as a mapping between the concepts of the Requirements Metamodel onto the concepts of the Function Point Analysis (FPA) Metamodel. A Requirements Estimation Tool (REST) was built to automate the measurement process. We demonstrate the feasibility of applying the estimation tool to a case study.
This work describes a measurement protocol to map the concepts used in the OO-method requirements... more This work describes a measurement protocol to map the concepts used in the OO-method requirements model onto the concepts used by the COSMIC full function points (COSMIC-FFP) functional size measurement method. This protocol describes a set of measurement operations for modeling and sizing object-oriented software systems from requirements specifications obtained in the context of the OO-method. This development method starts from a requirements model that allows the specification of software functional requirements and generates a conceptual model through a requirements analysis process. The main contribution of this work is an extended set of rules that allows estimating the functional size of OO systems at an early stage of the development lifecycle. A case study is introduced to report the obtained results from a practical point of view.
This chapter introduces a method that integrates navigational and presentational designs to objec... more This chapter introduces a method that integrates navigational and presentational designs to object-oriented conceptual modelling, and also provides systematic code generation. The essential expressiveness is provided using graphical schemas that specify navigation and presentation features, and use high-level abstraction primitives. Using conceptual schemas as input, a methodology is defined to systematically take a problem space to the solution space by defining a set of correspondences between conceptual modelling abstractions and the final software components. We also provide a case study that details the application of the proposed methodology.
Journal of Systems and Software, 2009
The objective of this paper is to empirically evaluate OOmFPWeb, a functional size measurement pr... more The objective of this paper is to empirically evaluate OOmFPWeb, a functional size measurement procedure for Web applications. We analyzed four data sets from a family of experiments conducted in Spain, Argentina and Austria. Results showed that OOmFPWeb is efficient when compared to current industry practices. OOmFPWeb produced reproducible functional size measurements and was perceived as easy to use and useful by the study participants, who also expressed their intention to use OOmFPWeb in the future. The analysis further supports the validity and reliability of Moody's Method Evaluation Model for evaluating functional size measurement methods.
Due to the increasing interest in the model driven architecture (MDA) paradigm, the conceptual mo... more Due to the increasing interest in the model driven architecture (MDA) paradigm, the conceptual models have become the backbone of the software development process. So far some methods exist to develop a user interface according to a MDA-compliant method, none of them explicitly connects usability to their process activities. In this paper, we present a framework which incorporates usability as part of a MDA development process. In particular, a usability model for early evaluation is proposed. Using this model, the usability of a software system is evaluated and improved at the platform independent model (PIM) level. It focuses on the correspondences between the abstract user interface elements and the final user interface elements in a specific platform (CM). This framework has been successfully applied to an industrial MDA tool
Usability evaluations should start early in the Web development process and occur repeatedly thro... more Usability evaluations should start early in the Web development process and occur repeatedly throughout all stages to ensure the quality of the Web application, not just when the product is completed. This paper presents a Web Usability Model, which is aligned with the SQuaRE standard, to evaluate usability at several stages of a Web development process that follows a Model-Driven Development (MDD) approach. The Web Usability Model is generic and must be operationalized into a concrete MDD method by specifying the relationships between the usability attributes of the Usability Model and the modeling primitives of the specific Web development method. To illustrate the feasibility of the approach, we present a case study where the Usability Model has been applied in the evaluation of the models that are produced during the Web application development process.
Software and System Modeling, 2006
Functional Size Measurement (FSM) methods are intended to measure the size of software by quantif... more Functional Size Measurement (FSM) methods are intended to measure the size of software by quantifying the functional user requirements of the software. The capability to accurately quantify the size of software in an early stage of the development lifecycle is critical to software project managers for evaluating risks, developing project estimates and having early project indicators. In this paper, we present OO-Method Function Points (OOmFP), which is a new FSM method for object-oriented systems that is based on measuring conceptual schemas. OOmFP is presented following the steps of a process model for software measurement. Using this process model, we present the design of the measurement method, its application in a case study, and the analysis of different evaluation types that can be carried out to validate the method and to verify its application and results.
This paper presents the Object-Oriented Web-Solutions Modeling approach (OOWS), which provides me... more This paper presents the Object-Oriented Web-Solutions Modeling approach (OOWS), which provides mechanisms to deal with the development of hypermedia information systems and e-commerce applications in web environments. It is proposed as an extension of an object-oriented method for automatic code generation based on conceptual models (OO-Method). The main contribution of this work is the introduction of a navigational model that is completely embedded in the process of conceptual modeling, to specify navigational features as a main part of what is conventionally specified during the conceptual modeling process. This navigational model provides abstraction primitives that allow to capture and represent navigational semantics in a precise way. We show how to put into practice the OOWS approach through a successful practical example developed within the context of e-commerce applications.
Recently, a number of methods and techniques for assessing the quality of software product lines ... more Recently, a number of methods and techniques for assessing the quality of software product lines have been proposed. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no study which summarizes all the existing evidence about them. This paper presents a systematic review that investigates what methods and techniques have been employed (in the last 10 years) to evaluate the quality of software product lines and how they were employed. A total of 39 research papers have been reviewed from an initial set of 1388 papers. The results show that 25% of the papers reported evaluations at the Design phase of the Domain Engineering phase. The most widely used mechanism for modeling quality attributes was extended feature models and the most evaluated artifact was the base architecture. In addition, the results of the review have identified several research gaps. Specifically, 77% of the papers employed case studies as a "proof of concept" whereas 23% of the papers did not perform any type of validation. Our results are particularly relevant in positioning new research activities and in the selection of quality evaluation methods or techniques that best fit a given purpose.
Nowadays, several approaches for developing web applications have been proposed in the literature... more Nowadays, several approaches for developing web applications have been proposed in the literature. Most of them extend existing object-oriented conceptual modeling methods, incorporating new constructors in order to model the navigational structure and the content of web applications. Such new constructors are commonly represented in a Navigational Model. While navigational models constitute the backbone of web application design, their quality has a great impact on the quality of the final product which is actually implemented and delivered. In this paper, we discuss a set of metrics for navigational models that has been proposed for analyzing the quality of web applications in terms of size and structural complexity. These metrics were defined and validated using a formal framework (DISTANCE) for software measure construction that satisfies the measurement needs of empirical software engineering research. Some experimental studies have shown that complexity affects the ability to understand and maintain conceptual models. In order to prove this, we also made a controlled experiment to observe how the proposed metrics can be used as early maintainability indicators.
International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, 2003
Abstract: Today, more and more Web sites and Applications (WebApps) are becoming mission-critical... more Abstract: Today, more and more Web sites and Applications (WebApps) are becoming mission-critical systems. Measures of functional size are a prerequisite to successful quantitative management of software projects. However, the nature of the web has recently imposed ...
Information & Software Technology, 2011
In recent years, many Usability Evaluation Methods (UEMs) have been employed to evaluate Web appl... more In recent years, many Usability Evaluation Methods (UEMs) have been employed to evaluate Web applications. However, many of these applications still do not meet most customers' usability expectations and many companies have folded as a result of not considering Web usability issues. No studies currently exist with regard to either the use of usability evaluation methods for the Web or the benefits they bring.
Model-driven architecture (MDA) has recently attracted the interest of both the research communit... more Model-driven architecture (MDA) has recently attracted the interest of both the research community and industry corporations. It specifies an automated process for developing interactive applications from high-level models to code generation. This approach can play a key role in the fields of software engineering (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI). Although there are some MDA-compliant methods for developing user interfaces, none of them explicitly integrates usability engineering with user interface engineering. This chapter addresses this issue by showing how the usability of user interfaces that are generated automatically by an industrial MDA-compliant CASE tool can be assessed. The goal is to investigate whether MDA-compliant methods improve software usability through model transformations. To accomplish this, two usability evaluations were conducted in the code model (final user interface). Results showed that the usability problems identified at this level provide valuable feedback on the improvement of platform-independent models (PIM) and platform-specific models (PSM) supporting the notion of usability produced by construction.
This paper describes further analysis on the evaluation of OO-method function points for the Web ... more This paper describes further analysis on the evaluation of OO-method function points for the Web (OOmFPWeb), a functional size measurement method for Web applications. OOmFPWeb was evaluated using a range of performance-based and perception-based variables including productivity, reproducibility, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and intention to use. The evaluation was guided by an evaluation model for information systems design
The building of Web-based systems has often been ad hoc, lacking systematic development approache... more The building of Web-based systems has often been ad hoc, lacking systematic development approaches, and quality control and assurance processes. In order to avoid the Web crisis, urge Web Engineering approaches for eliciting, developing and maintaining Web sites and Applications (WebApps) of required quality within budgetary constrains. To bridge this gap, one of our current concerns is assessing the quality of operative WebApps considering both functional and nonfunctional requirements. We claim that an operative site should be assessed not only from the quality perspective of the nonfunctional requirements, but also from the functional viewpoint like informational and navigational architecture. WebFP_QEM is a methodology that allows capturing business and application goals for different audiences, specifying informational and navigational models, specifying quality models and assessment criteria, and analyzing outcomes in order to give recommendations for improvements. Furthermore, if a change is suggested based on a recommendation document, the estimation of the maintenance cost can be done using a Web-centered Function Points measure.
Abstract. The demand for web applications that take into account the different needs and interest... more Abstract. The demand for web applications that take into account the different needs and interests of the users has been increasing. Personal-ization can involve a wide-range of approaches and techniques to design the end-user experience. This paper discusses the use of ...
The goal of this paper is to investigate which requirements engineering techniques have been appl... more The goal of this paper is to investigate which requirements engineering techniques have been applied in the development of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) and how they were applied. We performed a systematic review of 58 of a total of 835 papers found in scientific digital libraries. The results show that most of the proposals for dealing with requirements (79%) use already defined methods or techniques from other software development paradigms and that 69% of these techniques are based on the goal-oriented paradigm. A total of 95% of the reviewed papers focus on techniques for analyzing requirements, and only 45% of them explicitly consider some type of elicitation technique. Finally, only 5% of the papers give some empirical evidence about the effectiveness of their approaches by conducting empirical studies. The results of our study are particularly important in the determination of current research activities in Requirements Engineering for MAS and in the identification of research gaps for further investigation.
In this article we thoroughly discuss conceptual and navigational modeling and query issues for r... more In this article we thoroughly discuss conceptual and navigational modeling and query issues for repositories of metrics and their cataloging system by exploiting as well the power of the semantic web approach. This environment can finally allow tools, evaluators and other stakeholders to have service and consultation mechanisms starting from a sound specification of the entity type, the attribute definition and motivation, the metric definition as well as the measure type, unit, scale type, data collection instruments, protocols, among other metadata.
1Department of Information Systems and Computation Valencia University of Technology Camino de Ve... more 1Department of Information Systems and Computation Valencia University of Technology Camino de Vera, s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain {sabrahao, opastor}@dsic.upv.es ... 2Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Ghent University Hoveniersberg 24, 9000 Ghent, Belgium ...
Early software size estimation is essential for good project management. Although several proposa... more Early software size estimation is essential for good project management. Although several proposals to estimate software size from requirement specifications exist, most of them have not been properly defined or automated. This paper presents the design and automation of a measurement procedure (ReqPoints) to estimate the size of object-oriented software projects from a requirements specification. The procedure is based on a requirements engineering approach that provides a MDA framework for requirements specification and model transformations to obtain the architecture of UML models. Specifically, a set of measurement rules is defined as a mapping between the concepts of the Requirements Metamodel onto the concepts of the Function Point Analysis (FPA) Metamodel. A Requirements Estimation Tool (REST) was built to automate the measurement process. We demonstrate the feasibility of applying the estimation tool to a case study.
This work describes a measurement protocol to map the concepts used in the OO-method requirements... more This work describes a measurement protocol to map the concepts used in the OO-method requirements model onto the concepts used by the COSMIC full function points (COSMIC-FFP) functional size measurement method. This protocol describes a set of measurement operations for modeling and sizing object-oriented software systems from requirements specifications obtained in the context of the OO-method. This development method starts from a requirements model that allows the specification of software functional requirements and generates a conceptual model through a requirements analysis process. The main contribution of this work is an extended set of rules that allows estimating the functional size of OO systems at an early stage of the development lifecycle. A case study is introduced to report the obtained results from a practical point of view.
This chapter introduces a method that integrates navigational and presentational designs to objec... more This chapter introduces a method that integrates navigational and presentational designs to object-oriented conceptual modelling, and also provides systematic code generation. The essential expressiveness is provided using graphical schemas that specify navigation and presentation features, and use high-level abstraction primitives. Using conceptual schemas as input, a methodology is defined to systematically take a problem space to the solution space by defining a set of correspondences between conceptual modelling abstractions and the final software components. We also provide a case study that details the application of the proposed methodology.
Journal of Systems and Software, 2009
The objective of this paper is to empirically evaluate OOmFPWeb, a functional size measurement pr... more The objective of this paper is to empirically evaluate OOmFPWeb, a functional size measurement procedure for Web applications. We analyzed four data sets from a family of experiments conducted in Spain, Argentina and Austria. Results showed that OOmFPWeb is efficient when compared to current industry practices. OOmFPWeb produced reproducible functional size measurements and was perceived as easy to use and useful by the study participants, who also expressed their intention to use OOmFPWeb in the future. The analysis further supports the validity and reliability of Moody's Method Evaluation Model for evaluating functional size measurement methods.
Due to the increasing interest in the model driven architecture (MDA) paradigm, the conceptual mo... more Due to the increasing interest in the model driven architecture (MDA) paradigm, the conceptual models have become the backbone of the software development process. So far some methods exist to develop a user interface according to a MDA-compliant method, none of them explicitly connects usability to their process activities. In this paper, we present a framework which incorporates usability as part of a MDA development process. In particular, a usability model for early evaluation is proposed. Using this model, the usability of a software system is evaluated and improved at the platform independent model (PIM) level. It focuses on the correspondences between the abstract user interface elements and the final user interface elements in a specific platform (CM). This framework has been successfully applied to an industrial MDA tool
Usability evaluations should start early in the Web development process and occur repeatedly thro... more Usability evaluations should start early in the Web development process and occur repeatedly throughout all stages to ensure the quality of the Web application, not just when the product is completed. This paper presents a Web Usability Model, which is aligned with the SQuaRE standard, to evaluate usability at several stages of a Web development process that follows a Model-Driven Development (MDD) approach. The Web Usability Model is generic and must be operationalized into a concrete MDD method by specifying the relationships between the usability attributes of the Usability Model and the modeling primitives of the specific Web development method. To illustrate the feasibility of the approach, we present a case study where the Usability Model has been applied in the evaluation of the models that are produced during the Web application development process.
Software and System Modeling, 2006
Functional Size Measurement (FSM) methods are intended to measure the size of software by quantif... more Functional Size Measurement (FSM) methods are intended to measure the size of software by quantifying the functional user requirements of the software. The capability to accurately quantify the size of software in an early stage of the development lifecycle is critical to software project managers for evaluating risks, developing project estimates and having early project indicators. In this paper, we present OO-Method Function Points (OOmFP), which is a new FSM method for object-oriented systems that is based on measuring conceptual schemas. OOmFP is presented following the steps of a process model for software measurement. Using this process model, we present the design of the measurement method, its application in a case study, and the analysis of different evaluation types that can be carried out to validate the method and to verify its application and results.