RGPS: Metamodel for On-Demand Model Selection

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RGPS Metamodel for On-Demand Model
Selection
A New Working Item for ISO/IEC JTC1 SC32

• He Keqing, Wang Jian, He Yangfan, Wang Chong
• State Key Lab of Software Engineering,
  Wuhan University, China
• 2008-05-27

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Content

• Motivation
• Scope
• Summary

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Content

• Motivation
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Hints from Mass Customization (MC)
• Scope
• Summary

4
IT Evolution

• Objectives
• Provide On-demand Services for End-Users
• Provide On-demand Production for System
  Engineers

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From the perspective of SaaS

• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• A typical customer-centric application
• A model of software delivery where software
  providers provide daily maintenance and technical
  supports for customers
• What customers need is the online service
  provided by software, instead of software itself.
• Customers care how to select suitable services.
  Accordingly, software providers should provide
  on-demand services to satisfy customers.
• Scale changes everything!
• System of systems
• The size and complexity of systems are increasing
  continuously, which will increase difficulties
  and bring challenges to on-demand service
  selection.

On-demand service selection should be effectively
supported !
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From the perspective of MFI
Research on On-demand Model Selection in MFI is
still insufficient !
choice of the model instance by a user purpose
From Masaharu Obayashi, ISO/IEC SC32 19763(MFI)
Part2, 2006
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How can MFI support SaaS?
Users requirements are expressed with domain
vocabularies and rules
System models are managed according to
registration mechanism
A Gap
End User
Technical Engineer
Get hints from Mass Customization
SaaS
MFI
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What is Mass Customization (MC)

• Mass Customization provides solutions for
  on-demand product supply
• It has been successfully applied in manufacturing
  industry.
• It embodies the key elements for effective
  on-demand model selection!
• Mass Customization
• Mass Production Customization Production
• PointCustomization and personalization of
  products and services for individual customers at
  a low price and in a short time
• Strategies in MC can also satisfy the need of
  on-demand model selection.

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Product Process Change Matrix in MC
Virtual Enterprise Flow
Mass Customization
Innovation
Dynamic
Product Change
Mass Production Axis
Continual Improvement
Static
Mass Production
Mass Customization Axis
Static
Dynamic
Process Change
From B. Joseph Pine ll, Mass Customization The
New Frontier in Business Competition. 1993,USA
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Compare Change Matrix in MC with SCIS
Mass Production Axis
Mass Customization Axis
Model Sign
Model Concept
Domain Mass Customization
Personalized Innovation
End User
System Model Production
Improvement of Service
System Engineer
Model Selection
Model Instance
Virtual Service Flow (Customer centric and Domain
oriented)
SCIS Model Sign - Model Concept - Model
Instance - Model Selection
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Applying Basic Strategies of MC into On-Demand
Model Selection

• Quick Response
• Modularized Components
• Customization at Delivery Position

Model Selection
MC
Effective Model Mapping Transformation
Service based Resource Aggregation
Modeling Customers Current Context and Making
Online Service Selection
RGPS helps to apply these strategies in On-Demand
model selection!
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RGPS- A enabler for on demand model selection

• For enterprises, some employees are responsible
  for analyzing the characteristics of market and
  the need of users.
• Users inclination can be extracted and used to
  help product design.
• Strategies can be applied based on analysis of
  users inclination and characteristics of market.
• A similar mechanism is needed to help us meet
  users personalized requirements and apply
  strategies during on demand model selection
  process.
• RGPS can be used to fulfill this task.
• metamodel of domain models
• enabler for on demand model selection

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Why RGPS?

• Target -- modeling customers real intention and
  composing candidate components to satisfy
  customers.
• Considering the characteristics of customers
  intention and implementation form in network
• Customers intention is proposed from the
  perspective of the roles they play, and the roles
  are always tangled.
• Customers goals are aptly variable and diverse.
• The business processes to fulfill the goals are
  usually complex.
• Services are the representative form of software
  systems in network.
• Modeling customers real intention from four
  aspects Role, Goal, Process, and Service.
• Customers intention can be expressed from
  different level and different granularity
• RGPS From disorder to order --? To help users
  select appropriate service models

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Content

• Motivation
• Scope
• Summary

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Relationships between the four layers in RGPS

• Relationships between Role and Goal
• Roles take charge of corresponding role goals
• An actor prefers his personal goal
• Relationships between Goal and Process
• Processes achieve functional goals
• Processes contribute to the fulfillment of
  nonfunctional goals
• Relationships between Process and Service
• Services realize processes

R
G
P
S
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Applying RPGS for Domain Modeling
Functional Goal Sort Order
Domain Ontologies
Users intention can be described with RGPS!
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Model Selection based on MFI and RGPS
User-friendly Languages
Annotation
End User
Mapping Transformation
Evaluating Model Selection
Personalized model Provision
System Engineer
Resource binding
Standards are needed!
Need to be strengthened for On-Demand model
selection
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Applying MFI to Register RGPS-based Domain Model
Description Language
R
Role / User
OWL
Goal
G
Subgoal
OWL
Subgoal
Subgoal
Subgoal
Subgoal
Subgoal
P
OWL-S
OWL-S
Service
Service
Service
Service
S
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Examples of RGPS-based On-demand Model Selection
Developing a reservation system
Role Model
Reserving an air ticket between two cities
prefers
takesCharge
Case1
Goal Model
achieves
Choosing a reservation service with the least cost
contributes
Decomposition
Process Model
Case2
realizes
Service Model
Case3
Resource Binding
Service Mass Customization
Service2
Service4
Service1
Service5
Service3

• RGPS paves the way for realizing On-Demand Model
  Selection Strategies!
• Effective Model Mapping Transformation
• Service based Resource Aggregation
• Modeling Customers Current Context and
  Making Online Service Selection

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Content

• Motivation
• Scope
• Summary

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Research Foundation

• Projects supported
• Requirements Engineering - the Basic Research of
  Software Engineering for Complex System,
  National Basic Research Program of China (No.
  2007CB310801 )
• Research on Requirements Elicitation and
  Evolution Modeling of Networked Software,
  National Basic Research Program of China (No.
  2006CB708302 )
• Semantic Interoperability Application and
  Integration Mechanism of Complex Information
  Resource, National High Technology Research and
  Development Program of China (No. 2006AA04Z156)
• Research papers
• Jian Wang, Keqing He, Ping Gong, Chong Wang, Rong
  Peng, Bing Li, "RGPS A Unified Requirements
  Meta-Modeling Frame for Networked Software", In
  Proceedings of IWAAPF'08 at ICSE'08 Workshop ,
  Leipzig, Germany, May 2008.
• Keqing He, Peng Liang, Bing Li, Rong Peng, and
  Jing Liu, Meta-modeling of Requirement for
  Networked Software - An Open Hierarchical
  Cooperative Unified Requirement Framework URF,
  Dynamics of Continuous Discrete and Impulsive
  Systems - Series B, Special issue on Software
  Engineering and Complex Networks, 2007,
  pp.293-298.
• Jian Wang, Keqing He, Bing Li, Wei Liu, Rong
  Peng, Meta-models of Domain Modeling Framework
  for Networked Software. In Proceedings of The
  Sixth International Conference on Grid and
  Cooperative Computing. Urumchi, China, July 2007,
  pp. 878-885.
• Keqing He, Peng Liang, Rong Peng, Bing Li, Jing
  Liu, Requirement emergence computation of
  networked software, Frontiers of Computer
  Science in China, 2007, 1(3), pp.322-328.

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Current RGPS Metamodels
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Strength of RGPS

• Help to model the real intention of customers
• Support effective on-demand model selection
• As an enabler for service mass customization
• As a supplement of MFI and MDR

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Thank you!

• hekeqing_at_sklse.org
• wangjian_sd_at_163.com
• heyangfan927_at_163.com wangchong_whu_at_yahoo.com

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Comparison
Existing Model Selection Techniques RGPS-based Model Selection
Target user group Technical experts The masses (Technical experts, Novices, Occasional users,)
Ways to express users request Keywords User Friendly Languages
Relationship between users request and registration mechanism Dependent on Info registration mechanism Loose coupling with Info registration mechanism
Analysis of users input Weakly supported Help to extract users intention Help to supplement users request Help to satisfy on-demand preferential Help to increase the completeness of results
Precision of results Low High
Support for Mass Customization of service Provide service registration mechanism Seldom consider the need of customization Facilitate personalized user selection Provide supportive framework for mass customization
Support for business-level system production Hardly support (only satisfy the need of end user) Support (satisfy not only the need of end user, but also that of system engineer)
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Relationship between MFI-5 and RGPS
MFI-5 RGPS
Service is treated as a kind of process model The relationship between Process and service is more complex
MFI-5 cares about how to register process model based on MFI-2 RGPS serves as a supplement for MFI-2
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MC and RGPS
MFI-2 SCIS
Market and user analysis
RGPS-based Domain Modeling
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Related Works

• SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)
• A way to implement SaaS
• Promote interoperation between services
• Service discovery mainly based on service
  registration mechanism
• Mainly technique people oriented
• Intel DSD (Dynamic Service Discovery)
• Provides a dynamic service discovery mechanism
  based on UDDI
• Can be applied only when customers know exactly
  the parameters for expected service. Otherwise,
  DSD can hardly work because it doesn't provide a
  mechanism for modeling customers' real intention.