Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
A Metamodelling Approach for
i*
Model Translations
*
Carlos Cares
1,2
and Xavier Franch
1
1
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
c/Jordi Girona, 1-3, E-08034 Barcelona, Spain
{ccares,franch}@essi.upc.edu
2
Universidad de la Frontera (UFRO)
Fco. Salazar 01145 Temuco, Chile
carlos.cares@ceisufro.cl
Abstract.
The
i*
(i-star) framework has been widely adopted by the informa-
tion systems community. Since the time it was proposed, different variations
have arisen. Some of them just propose slight changes in the language defini-
tion, whilst others introduce constructs for particular usages. This flexibility is
one of the reasons that makes
i*
attractive, but it has as counterpart the impos-
sibility 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 fea-
ture-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 supermeta-
model 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 inter-
connection of two tools.
Keywords:
i*
, i-star, interoperability, semantic preservation, iStarML.
1 Introduction
The
i*
(pronounced
i-star
) framework [1] is currently one of the most widespread
goal- and agent-oriented modelling and reasoning frameworks. It has been applied for
modelling organizations, business processes and system requirements, among others.
Throughout the years, different research groups have proposed variations to the
modelling language proposed in the
i*
framework (for the sake of brevity, we will
name it “the
i*
language”). There are basically two reasons behind this fact:
-
The definition of the
i*
language is loose in some parts, and some groups have
opted by different solutions or proposed slight changes to the original definition.
The absence of a universally agreed metamodel has accentuated this effect [2].
*
This work has been partially supported by the Spanish project TIN2010-19130-c02-01
