Discussion about MFI-8: Metamodel for Role and Goal Registration Wang Jian, He Keqing, He Yangfan, Wang Chong SKLSE, Wuhan University, P.R. China 2009.11.18

Motivation In the development of local and distributed information systems, roles and goals are two important factors. Roles can be used to identify the objectives of the system, and express the preferential requirements of users. Goals provide a way for describing business processes at a higher abstraction level. Effective management of roles and goals contributes to describing users intention and reusing information resources with greater granularity.

Definitions from wikipedia A role or a social role is a set of connected behaviors, rights and obligations as conceptualized by actors in a social situation. It is an expected behavior in a given individual social status and social position. A goal or objective is a projected state of affairs that a person or a system plans or intends to achieve—a personal or organizational desired end-point in some sort of assumed development.

Definitions in MFI-8 A role is abstract characterizations of organizational behaviours and responsibilities within specified organizational context. Description of roles will be helpful in characterizing goals in a more complete and correct way. A goal is a descriptive statement of business intent of a user or an organization, and it can be viewed as an objective that the business system under consideration should achieve.

Scope of MFI-8(1/2) Specify a metamodel for registering users’ roles and goals in specific domains that can be used to describe users’ intention. Define the decomposition and constraint relationships between goals. From resolution of Wuhan Meeting, September, 2008

Scope of MFI-8(2/2) … Interoperation Registration Specification Common Facilities in MFI Part 1-4 Role and Goal Registry based on MFI-8 Registration Interoperation BMM … Specification In our opinion, there are many methodologies related to modeling the role and goal, such as BMM, RM-ODP, and so on. The purpose of these methods are used to guide defining a system specification. How will the different kinds of specifications be related and interoperated. A possible method is to define a registry to register different kinds of specifications. MFI-8 can be used to guide how to construct such a registry. So we think that there are two levels, one is the specification, and the other is registration. Tropos FOAF RM-ODP KAOS

Metamodel of Role and Goal registration

Relationship with Other Parts in MFI

Registering role and goal models FOAF RM-ODP BMM KAOS Tropos Then we will introduce some related work on role and goal description.

FOAF(Friend of a Friend) FOAF is a machine-readable ontology describing persons, their activities, and their relationships to other people and objects. FOAF allows groups of people to truly open social networks without the need for a centralised database, which is an important contribution to the linked information system known as the Web. FOAF is a famous social network, the social profile information defined in FOAF is very important to affect an actor’s preferential and activity.

An Example Social Profile of an actor in MFI-8 “interacts” in MFI-8

Enterprise View in RM-ODP G P Enterprise specification determines the purpose, scope and policies for a system, which consists of roles and policies with respect to the reference point. RM-ODP: Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing

Organization in MFI-8 Goal/ Decomposition in MFI-8 Actor in MFI-8 Role in MFI-8

BMM (Business Motivation Model) In goal description, OMG’s Business Motivation Model (BMM) provides a characterization mechanism of business intent and motivation. However, BMM is absent in directly relating business plan with business implementation The relationships among goals described in BMM are insufficient for complex goal decomposition, reasoning and reusing. OMG’s BMM is developed from a business perspective To develop a business model for the elements of the business plans before system design is begun.

Metamodel of BMM Operational Goal in MFI-8 Goal in MFI-8 Role in MFI-8 An End may be either a Vision or some Desired Result (a Goal or an Objective). Vision is an overall image of what the organization wants to be or become. It usually encompasses the entire organization and is long-term in its perspective. Desired Results, on the other hand, are the more specific Goals and Objectives that the enterprise, or some part of it, intends to achieve. Compared to an Objective, a Goal tends to be longer term, qualitative (rather than quantitative), general (rather than specific), and ongoing. Compared to a Goal, an Objective tends to be short term, quantitative (rather than qualitative), specific (rather than general), and not continuing beyond its time frame (which may be cyclical).

Metamodel of KAOS Role Goal/Personal Goal Decomposition/Constraint in MFI-8 KAOS is an important requirements engineering method. Goals are the essential elements of this method. Goal can be subdivided into systemgoal and private goal, which can be correspond to the role goal and personal goal in RGPS. Actor in MFI-8

Metamodel of Tropos Actor and Role in MFI-8 Goal in MFI-8 Tropos is another famous software engineering framework and methodology.

Future Work Summary Future work MFI-8 provides a generic framework for registering descriptive information of roles and goals; It aims to promote the reuse of information resources with greater granularity. Future work Harmonization with the other standards Submit a CD version in Feb. 2010

Thank you!

An Application of FOAF- DOAC (Description Of A Career) DOAC is a vocabulary to descriptive professional capabilities of a worker. Business people can search the internet to find a worker that fits their requirements and will be as easy as any search in Google. Other applications: Facebook, Twitter, etc Social Profile information of an actor in RGPS

Role in MFI-8 Functional Goal in MFI-8 Nonfunctional Goal in MFI-8 In the enterprise specification language, Roles are explicitly defined as a behaviour to be associated with one of the component objects. Enterprise specification determines the purpose, scope and policies for a system, which consists of roles and policies with respect to the reference point.

On Demand Model Selection (MFI-9) Role and Goal Registry based on MFI-8 Process Registry based on MFI-5 Service Registry based on MFI-7 Registration Interoperation BMM … BPEL … WSDL … Specification Tropos PSL WADL FOAF OPM WSMO RM-ODP UML OWL-S