A Metamodelling Approach for i* Model Translations

Abstract

The i* (i-star) framework has been widely adopted by the information systems community. Since the time it was proposed, different variations have arisen. Some of them just propose slight changes in the language definition, whilst others introduce constructs for particular usages. This flexibility is one of the reasons that makes i* attractive, but it has as counterpart the impossibility of automatically porting i* models from one context of use to another. This lack of interoperability makes difficult to build a repository of models, to adopt directly techniques defined for one variation, or to use i* tools in a feature-oriented instead of a variant-oriented way. In this paper, we explore in more detail the interoperability problem from a metamodel perspective. We analyse the state of the art concerning variations of the i* language, from these variations and following a proposal from Wachsmuth, we define a supermetamodel hosting identified variations, general enough so as to embrace others yet to exist. We present a translation algorithm oriented to semantic preservation and we use the XML-based iStarML interchange format to illustrate the interconnection of two tools.

Making Explicit Some Implicit i* Language Decisions

“…At a first sight, this work may seem to contradict somehow some of our previous work on the construction of an i* metamodel [15][5] [16] [14]. In these works, we advocate for an i* metamodel general enough to host most of the proposed variants of i*.…”

“…Several contributions exist that propose metamodels for i* with different purposes: 1) metamodels for particular i* variants like GRL's [12] and Tropos' [13]; 2) metamodels for supporting model interoperability [14]; 3) metamodels for providing a reference framework [15][16]; 4) metamodels as the basis for tool construction [17].…”

“…In [14] we performed a literature review as a baseline for model interoperability analysis. Since we focused on the analysis of i* constructs, the results of the review are applicable also in this paper.…”

Specialization in i* Strategic Rationale Diagrams

“…Even if it seems a low number, it has to be considered that the core community of researchers is not too big. As an indicator, we explored the literature review presented in [18] and counted 196 authors contributing to the 146 papers found; thus the survey's population was about the 10% of this core community of authors.…”

Translation of Requirements Engineering Models

“…On the contrary, our work stems from the idea that preserving as far as possible the working environment of the stakeholders involved in organizations which aim to cooperate is more realistic. This leads us to propose a translator between different kinds of existing RE models that follows, in a broader way, the principle of Cares and Franch [12]. These ones have defined a "super meta-model" hosting identified variations of i* and implementing a semantic preservation oriented translation algorithm between these different variations.…”