Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Goal-Based Behavioral Customization of Information
Systems
Sotirios Liaskos
1
, Marin Litoiu
1
, Marina Daoud Jungblut
1
, and John Mylopoulos
2
1
School of Information Technology, York University, Toronto, Canada
{
liaskos,mlitoiu,djmarina
}
@yorku.ca
2
Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, Italy
jm@disi.unitn.it
Abstract.
Customizing software to perfectly fit individual needs is becoming in-
creasingly important in information systems engineering. Users want to be able to
customize software behavior through reference to terms familiar to their diverse
needs and experience. We present a requirements-driven approach to behavioral
customization of software systems. Goal models are constructed to represent al-
ternative behaviors that users can exhibit to achieve their goals. Customization
information is then added to restrict the space of possibilities to those that fit
specific users, contexts or situations. Meanwhile, elements of the goal model are
mapped to units of source code. This way, customization preferences posed at
the requirements level are directly translated into system customizations. Our ap-
proach, which we apply to an on-line shopping cart system, does not assume
adoption of a particular development methodology, platform or variability imple-
mentation technique and keeps the reasoning computation overhead from inter-
fering with execution of the configured application.
Keywords:
Information
Systems
Engineering,
Goal
Modeling,
Software
Customization, Adaptive Systems.
1
Introduction
Adaptation is emerging as an important mechanism in engineering more flexible and
simpler to maintain and manage information systems. To cope with changes in the en-
vironment or in user requirements, adaptive systems are able to change their structure
and behavior so that they fit to the new conditions [1,2]. An important manifestation of
adaptivity is the ability of individual organizations and users to
customize
their software
to their unique and changing needs in different situations and contexts.
Consider, for example, an on-line store where users can browse and purchase items.
Normally, an anonymous user can browse the products, view their price information and
user comments, add them to the cart, log-in and check-out. But different shop-owners
may want variations of this process for different users. They may need, for example,
to withhold prices, user comments or other product information unless the user has
logged in, or only if the user's IP belongs to a certain set of countries. Or they may
wish to rearrange the sequence of screens that guide the buyer through the check-out
process. Or, finally, they may wish to disable purchasing and allow just browsing, with
only some frequent buyers allowed to add comments - with or without logging in first.
