2018
Journal article
Open Access
A Guidelines framework for understandable BPMN models
Corradini F., Ferrari A., Fornari F., Gnesi S., Polini A., Re B., Spagnolo G. O.
Business process modeling allows abstracting and reasoning on how work is structured within complex organizations. Business process models represent blueprints that can serve different purposes for a variety of stakeholders. For example, business analysts can use these models to better understand how the organization works; employees playing a role in the process can use them to learn the tasks that they are supposed to perform; software analysts/developers can refer to the models to understand the system-as-is before designing the system-to-be. Given the variety of stakeholders that need to interpret these models, and considering the pivotal function that models play within organizations, understandability becomes a fundamental quality that need to be taken into particular account by modelers. In this paper we provide a set of fifty guidelines that can help modelers to improve the understandability of their models. The work focuses on the Business Process Modelling Notation 2.0 standard published by the Object Management Group, which has acquired a clear predominance among the modeling notations for business processes. Guidelines were derived by means of a thoughtful literature review - which allowed identifying around one hundred guidelines - and through successive activities of synthesis and homogenization. In addition, we implemented a freely available open source tool, named BEBoP (understandaBility vErifier for Business Process models), to check the adherence of a model to the guidelines. Finally, guidelines violation has been checked with BEBoP on a dataset of 11,294 models available in a publicly accessible repository. Our tests show that, although the majority of the guidelines are respected by the models, some guidelines, which are recognized as fundamental by the literature, are frequently violated.Source: Data & knowledge engineering 113 (2018): 129–154. doi:10.1016/j.datak.2017.11.003
DOI: 10.1016/j.datak.2017.11.003
Project(s): LEARN PAD
Metrics:
Corradini F., Ferrari A., Fornari F., Gnesi S., Polini A., Re B., Spagnolo G. O.
Business process modeling allows abstracting and reasoning on how work is structured within complex organizations. Business process models represent blueprints that can serve different purposes for a variety of stakeholders. For example, business analysts can use these models to better understand how the organization works; employees playing a role in the process can use them to learn the tasks that they are supposed to perform; software analysts/developers can refer to the models to understand the system-as-is before designing the system-to-be. Given the variety of stakeholders that need to interpret these models, and considering the pivotal function that models play within organizations, understandability becomes a fundamental quality that need to be taken into particular account by modelers. In this paper we provide a set of fifty guidelines that can help modelers to improve the understandability of their models. The work focuses on the Business Process Modelling Notation 2.0 standard published by the Object Management Group, which has acquired a clear predominance among the modeling notations for business processes. Guidelines were derived by means of a thoughtful literature review - which allowed identifying around one hundred guidelines - and through successive activities of synthesis and homogenization. In addition, we implemented a freely available open source tool, named BEBoP (understandaBility vErifier for Business Process models), to check the adherence of a model to the guidelines. Finally, guidelines violation has been checked with BEBoP on a dataset of 11,294 models available in a publicly accessible repository. Our tests show that, although the majority of the guidelines are respected by the models, some guidelines, which are recognized as fundamental by the literature, are frequently violated.Source: Data & knowledge engineering 113 (2018): 129–154. doi:10.1016/j.datak.2017.11.003
DOI: 10.1016/j.datak.2017.11.003
Project(s): LEARN PAD
Metrics:
See at:
ISTI Repository 
| Data & Knowledge Engineering 
| www.sciencedirect.com | CNR ExploRA
2017
Conference article
Restricted
Checking business process modeling guidelines in apromore
Fornari F., Gnesi S., La Rosa M., Polini A., Re B., Spagnolo G. O.
We present the integration of BEBoP - understandaBility vErifier for Business Process models, into the Apromore open-source process analytics platform. Given a BPMN model the tool allows one to verify which understandability modeling guidelines such as layout conventions are violated by the model. Such guidelines are rules that a model designer should follow to guarantee that the designed model is easy to understand by relevant stakeholders. Given the variety of stakeholders that need to interpret these models, and considering the pivotal function that process models play within organizations, understandability becomes a fundamental quality requirement that needs to be taken into account by designers. The tool provides model designers with textual and graphical representations of which understandaiblity guidelines are violated. Designers can then decide to repair models in such a way to guarantee a higher degree of understandability.Source: BPM Demo Track and BPM Dissertation Award, Barcellona, 13/09/2017
Fornari F., Gnesi S., La Rosa M., Polini A., Re B., Spagnolo G. O.
We present the integration of BEBoP - understandaBility vErifier for Business Process models, into the Apromore open-source process analytics platform. Given a BPMN model the tool allows one to verify which understandability modeling guidelines such as layout conventions are violated by the model. Such guidelines are rules that a model designer should follow to guarantee that the designed model is easy to understand by relevant stakeholders. Given the variety of stakeholders that need to interpret these models, and considering the pivotal function that process models play within organizations, understandability becomes a fundamental quality requirement that needs to be taken into account by designers. The tool provides model designers with textual and graphical representations of which understandaiblity guidelines are violated. Designers can then decide to repair models in such a way to guarantee a higher degree of understandability.Source: BPM Demo Track and BPM Dissertation Award, Barcellona, 13/09/2017
See at:
ceur-ws.org | CNR ExploRA
2014
Conference article
Restricted
Research challenges in business process adaptability
Cognini R., Corradini F., Gnesi S., Polini A., Re B.
Modern software systems are more and more deployed within moving and continuously changing contexts. It is not easy to consider all the possible contexts configurations/variances at priori, or it is quite cumbersome and error prone to list and program all this variability points at development time. For such a reason different research trends try to develop mechanisms to express, analyse and support the dynamic adaptation of a software system while it is running. Business Processes show today similar characteristics. In order to keep their competitiveness and quality for products and services, organizations need to be able to adapt to changing contexts. Changes have to be reflected in the software systems supporting the corresponding organizational activities. In this paper we report the results of a systematic literature review on Business Process Adaptation. The reviewing process lead us to consider 84 papers from the main digital libraries indexing computer science conferences and journals. From the reading and the systematic analysis of these papers we derived some research trends and challenges which have been considered relevant to be able to cover the main sources of adaptation in the definition of effective Business Processes. Copyright 2014 ACM.Source: 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, pp. 1049–1054, Gyeongju, Republic of Korea, 24-28 / 03 / 2014
DOI: 10.1145/2554850.2555055
Metrics:
Cognini R., Corradini F., Gnesi S., Polini A., Re B.
Modern software systems are more and more deployed within moving and continuously changing contexts. It is not easy to consider all the possible contexts configurations/variances at priori, or it is quite cumbersome and error prone to list and program all this variability points at development time. For such a reason different research trends try to develop mechanisms to express, analyse and support the dynamic adaptation of a software system while it is running. Business Processes show today similar characteristics. In order to keep their competitiveness and quality for products and services, organizations need to be able to adapt to changing contexts. Changes have to be reflected in the software systems supporting the corresponding organizational activities. In this paper we report the results of a systematic literature review on Business Process Adaptation. The reviewing process lead us to consider 84 papers from the main digital libraries indexing computer science conferences and journals. From the reading and the systematic analysis of these papers we derived some research trends and challenges which have been considered relevant to be able to cover the main sources of adaptation in the definition of effective Business Processes. Copyright 2014 ACM.Source: 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, pp. 1049–1054, Gyeongju, Republic of Korea, 24-28 / 03 / 2014
DOI: 10.1145/2554850.2555055
Metrics:
See at:
doi.org | www.scopus.com | CNR ExploRA
2014
Journal article
Restricted
An Extensible Framework for Online Testing of Choreographed Services
Ali M., De Angelis F., Fanì D., Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Polini A.
Service choreographies present numerous engineering challenges, particularly with respect to testing activities, that traditional design-time approaches cannot properly address. A proposed online testing solution offers a powerful, extensible framework to effectively assess service compositions, leading to a more trustworthy and reliable service ecosystem.Source: Computer (Long Beach Calif. Print) 47 (2014): 23–29. doi:10.1109/MC.2013.407
DOI: 10.1109/mc.2013.407
Project(s): CHOREOS
Metrics:
Ali M., De Angelis F., Fanì D., Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Polini A.
Service choreographies present numerous engineering challenges, particularly with respect to testing activities, that traditional design-time approaches cannot properly address. A proposed online testing solution offers a powerful, extensible framework to effectively assess service compositions, leading to a more trustworthy and reliable service ecosystem.Source: Computer (Long Beach Calif. Print) 47 (2014): 23–29. doi:10.1109/MC.2013.407
DOI: 10.1109/mc.2013.407
Project(s): CHOREOS
Metrics:
See at:
Computer | ieeexplore.ieee.org | CNR ExploRA
2014
Contribution to conference
Open Access
Learn PAd : model-based social learning for public administrations
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Polini A., Silingas D.
In modern society public administrations (PAs) are undergoing a profound transformation of their role, from rigid controllers to proactive service providers. PA servants have to cope with quickly changing contexts due to new laws and governance policies, societal globalization, fast technology evolution. Moreover, notwithstanding the constant decrease of public budgets, PAs are challenged by citizens to constantly improve their service quality. To face the above needs, PA servants need to understand and put in action latest governance procedures and rules within tight time constraints. The European FP7 Project Learn PAd enables a novel model-driven learning approach, through an open platform fostering cooperation and knowledge-sharing and exploiting process simulation for an effective training and assessment. Learn PAd considers learning and working strongly intertwined (learning-while-doing). The platform supports both an informative learning approach based on enriched business process (BP) models, and a procedural learning approach based on simulation and monitoring (learning-by-doing). The platform relies on formal verification and natural language processing techniques to ensure accuracy of content and documentation, and on specialized ontologies and KPIs purposely defined to keep learners engaged. Learn PAd is inspired by open-source communities principles and cooperation spirit: contents are produced by the community, and meritocracy is naturally promoted, with leaders in process competence emerging because of their skill and expertise.Source: Let's 2014 - Leading Enabling Technologies for Societal Challenges, Bologna, Italy, 29 September - 1 October 2014
Project(s): LEARN PAD
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Polini A., Silingas D.
In modern society public administrations (PAs) are undergoing a profound transformation of their role, from rigid controllers to proactive service providers. PA servants have to cope with quickly changing contexts due to new laws and governance policies, societal globalization, fast technology evolution. Moreover, notwithstanding the constant decrease of public budgets, PAs are challenged by citizens to constantly improve their service quality. To face the above needs, PA servants need to understand and put in action latest governance procedures and rules within tight time constraints. The European FP7 Project Learn PAd enables a novel model-driven learning approach, through an open platform fostering cooperation and knowledge-sharing and exploiting process simulation for an effective training and assessment. Learn PAd considers learning and working strongly intertwined (learning-while-doing). The platform supports both an informative learning approach based on enriched business process (BP) models, and a procedural learning approach based on simulation and monitoring (learning-by-doing). The platform relies on formal verification and natural language processing techniques to ensure accuracy of content and documentation, and on specialized ontologies and KPIs purposely defined to keep learners engaged. Learn PAd is inspired by open-source communities principles and cooperation spirit: contents are produced by the community, and meritocracy is naturally promoted, with leaders in process competence emerging because of their skill and expertise.Source: Let's 2014 - Leading Enabling Technologies for Societal Challenges, Bologna, Italy, 29 September - 1 October 2014
Project(s): LEARN PAD
See at:
ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA
2014
Report
Unknown
Software requirements elicitation in the context of a collaborative research project: technical report
De Angelis G., Ferrari A., Gnesi S., Polini A.
Context and motivation: A large part of the research activities performed in European computer science institutions is funded through European Union (EU) projects. Such projects address challenging applied-research objectives and involve both academic and industrial partners that are normally spread across different states of the EU. These projects often include the definition of an integrated platform to be built with the collaboration of the different partners. Question/Problem : Eliciting and defining requirements for the platform in a distributed environment with heterogeneous stakeholders may be challenging. Partners have different objectives and views, needs are not sharply defined and communication is hampered both by the languages and by the physical distance of the stakeholders. Principal idea/results : This paper presents the experience of defining and applying an innovative requirements elicitation approach in the context of the Learn PAd project, a EU project concerning a learning framework for Public Administrations (PA). The approach combines KJ-method and collaborative wiki-based requirements sessions to come to a set of consolidated requirements.% Contribution : In the paper, we discuss the lessons learnt in this experience and we present advantages and drawbacks of the implemented approach.Source: ISTI Technical reports, 2014
Project(s): LEARN PAD
De Angelis G., Ferrari A., Gnesi S., Polini A.
Context and motivation: A large part of the research activities performed in European computer science institutions is funded through European Union (EU) projects. Such projects address challenging applied-research objectives and involve both academic and industrial partners that are normally spread across different states of the EU. These projects often include the definition of an integrated platform to be built with the collaboration of the different partners. Question/Problem : Eliciting and defining requirements for the platform in a distributed environment with heterogeneous stakeholders may be challenging. Partners have different objectives and views, needs are not sharply defined and communication is hampered both by the languages and by the physical distance of the stakeholders. Principal idea/results : This paper presents the experience of defining and applying an innovative requirements elicitation approach in the context of the Learn PAd project, a EU project concerning a learning framework for Public Administrations (PA). The approach combines KJ-method and collaborative wiki-based requirements sessions to come to a set of consolidated requirements.% Contribution : In the paper, we discuss the lessons learnt in this experience and we present advantages and drawbacks of the implemented approach.Source: ISTI Technical reports, 2014
Project(s): LEARN PAD
See at: CNR ExploRA
2013
Conference article
Restricted
ServicePot - An extensible registry for choreography governance
Ali M., De Angelis G., Polini A.
The Future Internet (FI) vision fosters the establishment of highly dynamic and continuously evolving systems in which different organizations, via provided e-services, dynamically cooperate at run-time, and possibly just for a single application level transaction. Service choreographies contribute to establish the FI vision, by providing support for the description of complex and interorganizational service-based applications. Specifically, the choreography paradigm facilitates the dynamic integration and interoperability of services managed and made available by different organizations. Nevertheless the real take off of choreography based solutions asks for the definition and development of suitable supporting frameworks (i.e. platforms and tools) permitting to govern the whole life-cycle of a service choreography. In this paper, we have introduced the main challenges and requirements for a software infrastructure supporting choreography adoption, and our response to these challenges: ServicePot. ServicePot is an extensible registry for choreography-based solutions offering choreography lifecycle management and governance features. The registry implements all the fundamental functionalities for choreography support and it has a plug-in based extensible architecture permitting the easy introduction of additional choreography related manipulation activities. A reference implementation of the registry is also introduced and discussed, taking into account choreographies specifications defined using the BPMN 2.0 standard notation.Source: SOSE 2013 - Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Service-Oriented System Engineering, pp. 113–124, San Francisco, March 25-28 2013
DOI: 10.1109/sose.2013.35
Project(s): CHOREOS
Metrics:
Ali M., De Angelis G., Polini A.
The Future Internet (FI) vision fosters the establishment of highly dynamic and continuously evolving systems in which different organizations, via provided e-services, dynamically cooperate at run-time, and possibly just for a single application level transaction. Service choreographies contribute to establish the FI vision, by providing support for the description of complex and interorganizational service-based applications. Specifically, the choreography paradigm facilitates the dynamic integration and interoperability of services managed and made available by different organizations. Nevertheless the real take off of choreography based solutions asks for the definition and development of suitable supporting frameworks (i.e. platforms and tools) permitting to govern the whole life-cycle of a service choreography. In this paper, we have introduced the main challenges and requirements for a software infrastructure supporting choreography adoption, and our response to these challenges: ServicePot. ServicePot is an extensible registry for choreography-based solutions offering choreography lifecycle management and governance features. The registry implements all the fundamental functionalities for choreography support and it has a plug-in based extensible architecture permitting the easy introduction of additional choreography related manipulation activities. A reference implementation of the registry is also introduced and discussed, taking into account choreographies specifications defined using the BPMN 2.0 standard notation.Source: SOSE 2013 - Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Service-Oriented System Engineering, pp. 113–124, San Francisco, March 25-28 2013
DOI: 10.1109/sose.2013.35
Project(s): CHOREOS
Metrics:
See at:
doi.org | HAL Descartes | ieeexplore.ieee.org | CNR ExploRA
2010
Conference article
Restricted
A counter-example testing approach for orchestrated services
De Angelis F., Polini A., De Angelis G.
Service oriented computing is based on a typical combination of features such as very late binding, run-time integration of software elements owned and managed by third parties, run-time changes. These characteristics generally make difficult both static and dynamic verification capabilities of service-centric systems. In this domain verification and testing research communities have to face new issues and revise existing solutions; possibly profiting of the new opportunities that the new paradigm makes available. In this paper, focusing on service orchestrations, we propose an approach to automatic test case generation aiming in particular at checking the behaviour of services participating in a given orchestration. The approach exploits the availability of a runnable model (the BPEL specification) and uses model checking techniques to derive test cases suitable to detect possible integration problems. The approach has been implemented in a plug-in for the Eclipse platform already released for public usage. In this way BPEL developers can easily derive, using a single environment, test suites for each participant service they would like to composeSource: Third International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation, pp. 373–382, Paris, 6-10 April 2010
DOI: 10.1109/icst.2010.27
Metrics:
De Angelis F., Polini A., De Angelis G.
Service oriented computing is based on a typical combination of features such as very late binding, run-time integration of software elements owned and managed by third parties, run-time changes. These characteristics generally make difficult both static and dynamic verification capabilities of service-centric systems. In this domain verification and testing research communities have to face new issues and revise existing solutions; possibly profiting of the new opportunities that the new paradigm makes available. In this paper, focusing on service orchestrations, we propose an approach to automatic test case generation aiming in particular at checking the behaviour of services participating in a given orchestration. The approach exploits the availability of a runnable model (the BPEL specification) and uses model checking techniques to derive test cases suitable to detect possible integration problems. The approach has been implemented in a plug-in for the Eclipse platform already released for public usage. In this way BPEL developers can easily derive, using a single environment, test suites for each participant service they would like to composeSource: Third International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation, pp. 373–382, Paris, 6-10 April 2010
DOI: 10.1109/icst.2010.27
Metrics:
See at:
doi.org | ieeexplore.ieee.org | CNR ExploRA
2010
Software
Unknown
Pick UP Performance Evaluation Test-bed
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Polini A.
Puppet (Pick UP Performance Evaluation Test-bed) is an approach supported by an implementation tool for the automatic generation of test-beds to empirically evaluate the QoS features of a Web Service under development. Specifically, the generation exploits the information about the coordinating scenario, the service description (WSDL) and the specification of the agreements (WS-Agreement).
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Polini A.
Puppet (Pick UP Performance Evaluation Test-bed) is an approach supported by an implementation tool for the automatic generation of test-beds to empirically evaluate the QoS features of a Web Service under development. Specifically, the generation exploits the information about the coordinating scenario, the service description (WSDL) and the specification of the agreements (WS-Agreement).
See at: CNR ExploRA
2009
Contribution to book
Open Access
The PLASTIC framework and tools for testing service-oriented applications
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Polini A., Frantzen L.
The emergence of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is changing the way in which software applications are developed. A serviceoriented application consists of the dynamic composition of autonomous services independently developed by different organizations and deployed on heterogenous networks. Therefore, validation of SOA poses several new challenges, without offering any discount for the more traditional testing problems. In this chapter we overview the PLASTIC validation framework in which different techniques can be combined for the verification of both functional and extra-functional properties, spanning over both off-line and on-line testing stages. The former stage concerns development time testing, at which services are exercised in a simulated environment. The latter foresees the monitoring of a service live usage, to dynamically reveal possible deviations from the expected behaviour. Some techniques and tools which fit within the outlined framework are presented.Source: Software Engineering, edited by Andrea Lucia, Filomena Ferrucci, pp. 106–139, 2009
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-95888-8_5
Metrics:
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Polini A., Frantzen L.
The emergence of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is changing the way in which software applications are developed. A serviceoriented application consists of the dynamic composition of autonomous services independently developed by different organizations and deployed on heterogenous networks. Therefore, validation of SOA poses several new challenges, without offering any discount for the more traditional testing problems. In this chapter we overview the PLASTIC validation framework in which different techniques can be combined for the verification of both functional and extra-functional properties, spanning over both off-line and on-line testing stages. The former stage concerns development time testing, at which services are exercised in a simulated environment. The latter foresees the monitoring of a service live usage, to dynamically reveal possible deviations from the expected behaviour. Some techniques and tools which fit within the outlined framework are presented.Source: Software Engineering, edited by Andrea Lucia, Filomena Ferrucci, pp. 106–139, 2009
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-95888-8_5
Metrics:
See at:
www.cs.ru.nl | doi.org | link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA
2009
Conference article
Restricted
On-line validation of service oriented systems in the european project TAS3
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Polini A.
The European Project TAS3 addresses the challenge of combining the openness, flexibility, dynamicity offered by service-oriented applications, together with privacy, security and reliability characteristics that are required when personal information is handled. In addition to appropriate authorization and authentication mechanisms, it is important to put in place appropriate validation procedures that can check the trustworthiness and dependability of services provided. We outline the Audition framework and discuss how such on-line validation approach can fit within the TAS3 vision of a seamless connected world, where the final users remain in charge for releasing and administering their data.Source: 2009 ICSE Workshop on Principles of Engineering Service Oriented Systems, pp. 107–110, Vancouver , Canada, 18-19 May 2009
DOI: 10.1109/pesos.2009.5068830
Project(s): TAS3, TAS3
Metrics:
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Polini A.
The European Project TAS3 addresses the challenge of combining the openness, flexibility, dynamicity offered by service-oriented applications, together with privacy, security and reliability characteristics that are required when personal information is handled. In addition to appropriate authorization and authentication mechanisms, it is important to put in place appropriate validation procedures that can check the trustworthiness and dependability of services provided. We outline the Audition framework and discuss how such on-line validation approach can fit within the TAS3 vision of a seamless connected world, where the final users remain in charge for releasing and administering their data.Source: 2009 ICSE Workshop on Principles of Engineering Service Oriented Systems, pp. 107–110, Vancouver , Canada, 18-19 May 2009
DOI: 10.1109/pesos.2009.5068830
Project(s): TAS3
, TAS3 Metrics:
See at:
ACM Digital Library | doi.org | ieeexplore.ieee.org | CNR ExploRA
2009
Conference article
Open Access
Automated testing of healthcare document transformations in the PICASSO interoperability platform
Pascale M., Roselli M., Rugani U., Bartolini C., Bertolino A., Lonetti F., Marchetti E., Polini A.
In every application domain, achieving interoperability among heterogenous information systems is a crucial challenge and alliances are formed to standardize data-exchange formats. In the healthcare sector, HL7-V3 provides the current international reference models for clinical and administrative documents. Codices, an Italian company, provides the PICASSO platform that uses HL7-V3 as the pivot format to fast achieve a highly integrated degree of interoperability among health-related applications. Given the XML structure of HL7-V3, PICASSO can exploit the XSLT technology to flexibly transform documents. However, Codices spends a large part of the PICASSO deployment workflow for manually validating the required XSL stylesheets. In this paper, we describe a pilot experience in test automation, based on the TAXI tool that applies systematic black-box techniques to generate a set of XML instances from a schema. Observed benefits to Codices development process are reported and discussed.Source: 31st International Conference on Software Engineering - Companion Volume, pp. 163–171, Vancouver, Canada, 16-24 May 2009
DOI: 10.1109/icse-companion.2009.5070974
Project(s): TAS3, TAS3
Metrics:
Pascale M., Roselli M., Rugani U., Bartolini C., Bertolino A., Lonetti F., Marchetti E., Polini A.
In every application domain, achieving interoperability among heterogenous information systems is a crucial challenge and alliances are formed to standardize data-exchange formats. In the healthcare sector, HL7-V3 provides the current international reference models for clinical and administrative documents. Codices, an Italian company, provides the PICASSO platform that uses HL7-V3 as the pivot format to fast achieve a highly integrated degree of interoperability among health-related applications. Given the XML structure of HL7-V3, PICASSO can exploit the XSLT technology to flexibly transform documents. However, Codices spends a large part of the PICASSO deployment workflow for manually validating the required XSL stylesheets. In this paper, we describe a pilot experience in test automation, based on the TAXI tool that applies systematic black-box techniques to generate a set of XML instances from a schema. Observed benefits to Codices development process are reported and discussed.Source: 31st International Conference on Software Engineering - Companion Volume, pp. 163–171, Vancouver, Canada, 16-24 May 2009
DOI: 10.1109/icse-companion.2009.5070974
Project(s): TAS3
, TAS3 Metrics:
See at:
ISTI Repository | doi.org | ieeexplore.ieee.org | CNR ExploRA
2009
Conference article
Restricted
SOA test governance: enabling service integration testing across organization and technology borders
Bertolino A., Polini A.
The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the emerging paradigm in information technology. More than a true "architecture", SOA provides a general reference model for the development, deployment and management of distributed dynamic systems. Companies are progressively adopting service-oriented technology, because of its many (real or idealized) foreseen benefits, among which notably loose coupling and dynamic interoperability. Such benefits, however, can only be achieved through discipline and standardization: in this respect, SOA Governance qualifies a framework of policies, procedures, design rules and documentation standards to be enforced for ensuring that different services and components can successfully cooperate towards a shared business goal. What about testing of such composite SOA applications? Little attention has been devoted so far by researchers to SOA testing, but awareness is raising that existing techniques and tools are not adequate. Our position in this paper is that the establishment of a test governance framework is a key issue for enabling SOA testing at integration and system levels. We discuss the inter-relation between technical and "social" aspects of SOA application testing, and attempt a first abstract definition of a SOA Test Governance notion. We provide examples of proposed SOA testing approaches that, more or less explicitly, rely on a cross-organization agreed test process.Source: International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops, 2009., pp. 277–286, Denver, Colorado, 1-4 April 2009
DOI: 10.1109/icstw.2009.39
Project(s): TAS3, TAS3
Metrics:
Bertolino A., Polini A.
The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the emerging paradigm in information technology. More than a true "architecture", SOA provides a general reference model for the development, deployment and management of distributed dynamic systems. Companies are progressively adopting service-oriented technology, because of its many (real or idealized) foreseen benefits, among which notably loose coupling and dynamic interoperability. Such benefits, however, can only be achieved through discipline and standardization: in this respect, SOA Governance qualifies a framework of policies, procedures, design rules and documentation standards to be enforced for ensuring that different services and components can successfully cooperate towards a shared business goal. What about testing of such composite SOA applications? Little attention has been devoted so far by researchers to SOA testing, but awareness is raising that existing techniques and tools are not adequate. Our position in this paper is that the establishment of a test governance framework is a key issue for enabling SOA testing at integration and system levels. We discuss the inter-relation between technical and "social" aspects of SOA application testing, and attempt a first abstract definition of a SOA Test Governance notion. We provide examples of proposed SOA testing approaches that, more or less explicitly, rely on a cross-organization agreed test process.Source: International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops, 2009., pp. 277–286, Denver, Colorado, 1-4 April 2009
DOI: 10.1109/icstw.2009.39
Project(s): TAS3
, TAS3 Metrics:
See at:
doi.org | ieeexplore.ieee.org | CNR ExploRA
2008
Conference article
Open Access
Model-based generation of testbeds for Web services
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Frantzen L., Polini A.
A Web Service is commonly not an independent software entity, but plays a role in some business process. Hence, it depends on the services provided by external Web Services, to provide its own service. While developing and testing a Web Service, such external services are not always available, or their usage comes along with unwanted side effects like, e.g., utilization fees or database modifications. We present a model-based approach to generate stubs for Web Services which respect both an extra-functional contract expressed via a Service Level Agreement (SLA), and a functional contract modeled via a state machine. These stubs allow a developer to set up a testbed over the target platform, in which the extra-functional and functional behavior of a Web Service under development can be tested before its publication.Source: 20th International Conference on Testing of Software and Communicating Systems, pp. 266–282, Tokyo, Japan, Jun 2008
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-68524-1_19
Metrics:
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Frantzen L., Polini A.
A Web Service is commonly not an independent software entity, but plays a role in some business process. Hence, it depends on the services provided by external Web Services, to provide its own service. While developing and testing a Web Service, such external services are not always available, or their usage comes along with unwanted side effects like, e.g., utilization fees or database modifications. We present a model-based approach to generate stubs for Web Services which respect both an extra-functional contract expressed via a Service Level Agreement (SLA), and a functional contract modeled via a state machine. These stubs allow a developer to set up a testbed over the target platform, in which the extra-functional and functional behavior of a Web Service under development can be tested before its publication.Source: 20th International Conference on Testing of Software and Communicating Systems, pp. 266–282, Tokyo, Japan, Jun 2008
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-68524-1_19
Metrics:
See at:
link.springer.com | doi.org | www.scopus.com | www.springerlink.com | CNR ExploRA
2008
Conference article
Open Access
Towards automated WSDL-based testing of Web services
Bartolini C., Bertolino A., Marchetti E., Polini A.
With the emergence of service-oriented computing, proper approaches are needed to validate a Web Service (WS) behaviour. In the last years several tools automating WS testing have been released. However, generally the selection of which and how many test cases should be run, and the instantiation of the input data into each test case, is still left to the human tester. In this paper we introduce a proposal to automate WSDL-based testing, which combines the coverage of WS operations with data-driven test case generation. We sketch the general architecture of a test environment that basically integrates two existing tools: soapUI, which is a popular tool for WS testing, and TAXI, which is a tool we have previously developed for the automated derivation of XML instances from a XML Schema. The test suite generation can be driven by basic coverage criteria and by the application of some heuristics, aimed in particular at systematically combining the generated instance elements in different ways, and at opportunely varying the cardinalities and the data values used for the generated instances.Source: ICSOC 2008 - Service-Oriented Computing. 6th International Conference, pp. 524–529, Sydney, Australia, 1-5 December 2008
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-89652-4_41
Project(s): TAS3, TAS3
Metrics:
Bartolini C., Bertolino A., Marchetti E., Polini A.
With the emergence of service-oriented computing, proper approaches are needed to validate a Web Service (WS) behaviour. In the last years several tools automating WS testing have been released. However, generally the selection of which and how many test cases should be run, and the instantiation of the input data into each test case, is still left to the human tester. In this paper we introduce a proposal to automate WSDL-based testing, which combines the coverage of WS operations with data-driven test case generation. We sketch the general architecture of a test environment that basically integrates two existing tools: soapUI, which is a popular tool for WS testing, and TAXI, which is a tool we have previously developed for the automated derivation of XML instances from a XML Schema. The test suite generation can be driven by basic coverage criteria and by the application of some heuristics, aimed in particular at systematically combining the generated instance elements in different ways, and at opportunely varying the cardinalities and the data values used for the generated instances.Source: ICSOC 2008 - Service-Oriented Computing. 6th International Conference, pp. 524–529, Sydney, Australia, 1-5 December 2008
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-89652-4_41
Project(s): TAS3
, TAS3 Metrics:
See at:
link.springer.com | doi.org | link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA
2008
Report
Open Access
PLASTIC - Test Framework: Assessment and Revision
Bertolino A., Bianculli D., De Angelis G., Frantzen L., Kiss Z. G., Ghezzi C., Polini A., Raimondi F., Sabetta A., Toffetti Carughi G., Wolf A.
This document is Deliverable D4.3 of PLASTIC Work Package 4 (WP4), titled: Test Framework: Assessment and Revision. It provides a detailed description of the most up-to-date version of the tools developed within WP4 along with guidelines for installing and using them. A first version of the tools with a preliminary accompanying description had been firstly released in Deliverable D4.2: Test Framework: Prototype Implementation, which can be considered superseded by this Deliverable. We refer throughout to WP4 Deliverable D4.1: Test Framework Specification and Architecture, which provided a comprehensive specification of the proposed PLASTIC validation framework, with state-of-the-art overview and justification for the adopted techniques. Although some of the basic principles underlying the framework are summoned up for completeness, the present deliverable must anyhow be considered together with D4.1. The PLASTIC validation framework is organised around two main phases, respectively called off-line and on-line. Off-line validation concerns validation at development time. In this phase services are tested in a fake/simulated environment that reproduces functional and/or extrafunctional run-time conditions. The tools made available for this stage are: 1. JAMBITION (see Chapter 2): this is a model-based testing tool that allows to automatically derive and execute invocation sequences on a service, checking whether the responses conform to a given specification, expressed as a Service State Machine (SSM). Jambition is based on a model based testing engine called Ambition , defined in D4.1, of which Jambition is the Java front-end. To facilitate the usage of Jambition, a library called MINERVA (see Chapter 3) has been embedded into the tool. Minerva permits to model SSMs via an UML modelling tool. 2. PUPPET (see Chapter 4): this is a tool to automatically generate stubs implementing external services invoked by the service under development. The mock services generated by Puppet exhibit a correct behaviour with respect to given non-functional properties. At the same time Puppet can generate stubs making invocations on the service under evaluation according to certain workload profiles. 3. WEEVIL (see Chapter 5): it consists of a synthetic-workload generator coupled with an environment for managing the deployment and execution of experiments. Weevil is intended to facilitate experimentation activities for distributed systems by providing engineers with a flexible, configurable, automated and, thus, repeatable process for evaluating their software on a networked testbed. On-line validation foresees testing of a service when it is ready for deployment and final usage. In particular, the PLASTIC validation framework supports validation during Live Usage, i.e., service behaviours are observed during real execution to reveal possible deviations from the expected behaviour. Also on-line validation can cover both functional and extra-functional properties. Tools developed to support this phase are: 1. DYNAMO-AOP (see Chapter 6): it is a framework for monitoring functional properties of external services which a BPEL process interacts with, to realize a composite service. 2. SLANGMON (see Chapter 7): it permits to dynamically detect violations of non-functional properties specified in SLAng (the PLASTIC language to specify service level specifications and service level agreements, developed within Work Package 2). Events related to the non-functional characteristics are logged and possibly used to redeem controversy.Source: Project report, PLASTIC, Deliverable D4.3, 2008
Bertolino A., Bianculli D., De Angelis G., Frantzen L., Kiss Z. G., Ghezzi C., Polini A., Raimondi F., Sabetta A., Toffetti Carughi G., Wolf A.
This document is Deliverable D4.3 of PLASTIC Work Package 4 (WP4), titled: Test Framework: Assessment and Revision. It provides a detailed description of the most up-to-date version of the tools developed within WP4 along with guidelines for installing and using them. A first version of the tools with a preliminary accompanying description had been firstly released in Deliverable D4.2: Test Framework: Prototype Implementation, which can be considered superseded by this Deliverable. We refer throughout to WP4 Deliverable D4.1: Test Framework Specification and Architecture, which provided a comprehensive specification of the proposed PLASTIC validation framework, with state-of-the-art overview and justification for the adopted techniques. Although some of the basic principles underlying the framework are summoned up for completeness, the present deliverable must anyhow be considered together with D4.1. The PLASTIC validation framework is organised around two main phases, respectively called off-line and on-line. Off-line validation concerns validation at development time. In this phase services are tested in a fake/simulated environment that reproduces functional and/or extrafunctional run-time conditions. The tools made available for this stage are: 1. JAMBITION (see Chapter 2): this is a model-based testing tool that allows to automatically derive and execute invocation sequences on a service, checking whether the responses conform to a given specification, expressed as a Service State Machine (SSM). Jambition is based on a model based testing engine called Ambition , defined in D4.1, of which Jambition is the Java front-end. To facilitate the usage of Jambition, a library called MINERVA (see Chapter 3) has been embedded into the tool. Minerva permits to model SSMs via an UML modelling tool. 2. PUPPET (see Chapter 4): this is a tool to automatically generate stubs implementing external services invoked by the service under development. The mock services generated by Puppet exhibit a correct behaviour with respect to given non-functional properties. At the same time Puppet can generate stubs making invocations on the service under evaluation according to certain workload profiles. 3. WEEVIL (see Chapter 5): it consists of a synthetic-workload generator coupled with an environment for managing the deployment and execution of experiments. Weevil is intended to facilitate experimentation activities for distributed systems by providing engineers with a flexible, configurable, automated and, thus, repeatable process for evaluating their software on a networked testbed. On-line validation foresees testing of a service when it is ready for deployment and final usage. In particular, the PLASTIC validation framework supports validation during Live Usage, i.e., service behaviours are observed during real execution to reveal possible deviations from the expected behaviour. Also on-line validation can cover both functional and extra-functional properties. Tools developed to support this phase are: 1. DYNAMO-AOP (see Chapter 6): it is a framework for monitoring functional properties of external services which a BPEL process interacts with, to realize a composite service. 2. SLANGMON (see Chapter 7): it permits to dynamically detect violations of non-functional properties specified in SLAng (the PLASTIC language to specify service level specifications and service level agreements, developed within Work Package 2). Events related to the non-functional characteristics are logged and possibly used to redeem controversy.Source: Project report, PLASTIC, Deliverable D4.3, 2008
See at:
ISTI Repository | www.ist-plastic.org | CNR ExploRA
2008
Report
Unknown
TAS3 Deliverable D10.1: Trustworthiness - State of the Art
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Flàvian C., Hoppenbrouwers J., Marchetti E., Polini A., Sabetta A.
This document is the first deliverable of TAS3 Work Package 10 (WP10): Quality Measures and Trustworthiness. As stated in the DoW, WP10 objectives are: _ Validating the functionality of the TAS offered services; _ Validating the usability of the TAS architecture; _ Evaluating agreed QoS parameters; _ Analyzing end-user perceived QoS. This deliverable is titled "Trustworthiness-State of the Art", as it is meant to provide an overview of the existing tools and technologies that at current stage we have identified as potentially useful to address the above WP goals. In particular we have organized the deliverable into two parts: in the first part we give a general survey of state of the art on the addressed fields. In the second part, we describe the tools that we will use, adapt and expand in the course of the project. Both parts reflect the organization of the WP into four tasks, which are respectively: T10.1 Automatic XML Instances Generation T10.2 Audition and Run-time Monitoring T10.3 QoS Monitoring and Trust T10.4 Usability Testing In reading the document, it must be considered that at time of writing the TAS3 architecture is still under development, therefore design decisions on technologies and standards have not yet been drawn. For this reason, the described tools and technologies have been considered as neutral or refer to WS* architecture.Source: Project report, TAS3, Deliverable D10.1, 2008
Project(s): TAS3
Bertolino A., De Angelis G., Flàvian C., Hoppenbrouwers J., Marchetti E., Polini A., Sabetta A.
This document is the first deliverable of TAS3 Work Package 10 (WP10): Quality Measures and Trustworthiness. As stated in the DoW, WP10 objectives are: _ Validating the functionality of the TAS offered services; _ Validating the usability of the TAS architecture; _ Evaluating agreed QoS parameters; _ Analyzing end-user perceived QoS. This deliverable is titled "Trustworthiness-State of the Art", as it is meant to provide an overview of the existing tools and technologies that at current stage we have identified as potentially useful to address the above WP goals. In particular we have organized the deliverable into two parts: in the first part we give a general survey of state of the art on the addressed fields. In the second part, we describe the tools that we will use, adapt and expand in the course of the project. Both parts reflect the organization of the WP into four tasks, which are respectively: T10.1 Automatic XML Instances Generation T10.2 Audition and Run-time Monitoring T10.3 QoS Monitoring and Trust T10.4 Usability Testing In reading the document, it must be considered that at time of writing the TAS3 architecture is still under development, therefore design decisions on technologies and standards have not yet been drawn. For this reason, the described tools and technologies have been considered as neutral or refer to WS* architecture.Source: Project report, TAS3, Deliverable D10.1, 2008
Project(s): TAS3
See at: CNR ExploRA
2007
Conference article
Restricted
Architectural verification of black-box component-based systems
Bertolino A., Muccini H., Polini A.
We introduce an original approach, which combines monitoring and model checking techniques into a comprehensive methodology for the architectural verification of Component-based systems. The approach works by first capturing the traces of execution via the instrumented middleware; then, the observed traces are reverse engineered into Message Sequence Charts, which are then checked for compliance to the Component-based Software Architecture, using a model checker. The methodology has been conceived for being applied indifferently for validating the system in house before deployment and for continuous validation in the field following evolution. A case study for the first case is here illustrated.Source: RISE 2006 Third International Workshop, pp. 98–113, Geneva, Switzerland, 13-15 September 2006
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-71876-5
Metrics:
Bertolino A., Muccini H., Polini A.
We introduce an original approach, which combines monitoring and model checking techniques into a comprehensive methodology for the architectural verification of Component-based systems. The approach works by first capturing the traces of execution via the instrumented middleware; then, the observed traces are reverse engineered into Message Sequence Charts, which are then checked for compliance to the Component-based Software Architecture, using a model checker. The methodology has been conceived for being applied indifferently for validating the system in house before deployment and for continuous validation in the field following evolution. A case study for the first case is here illustrated.Source: RISE 2006 Third International Workshop, pp. 98–113, Geneva, Switzerland, 13-15 September 2006
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-71876-5
Metrics:
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www.springerlink.com | CNR ExploRA
2007
Conference article
Restricted
Monitoring architectural properties in dynamic component-based systems
Muccini H., Polini A., Ricci F., Bertolino A.
Modern systems are increasingly required to be capable to evolve at run-time, in particular allowing for the dynamic plugging of new features. It is important that this evolution happens preserving some established properties (which can concern the structure, the interaction patterns, or crucial extra-functional properties, such as reliability or security), and due to dynamicity this needs to be checked at run-time, as the changes occur. In this work we consider evolving component-based systems formed by a kernel architecture to which new components can be plugged in at run-time, and introduce the MOSAICO approach for the run-time monitoring of architectural properties. MOSAICO uses Aspect-oriented technologies for instrumenting and monitoring the system according to selected architectural properties. MOSAICO can handle evolving black-box component systems since it continuously watches the events occurring at the extension points of the kernel architecture.The application of a prototype implementation of MOSAICO, capable to handle interaction pattern properties, is illustrated on the NewsFeeder case study.Source: Component-Based Software Engineering. 10th International Symposium CBSE 2007, pp. 124–139, Medford, MA, USA, 9-11 July 2007
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-73551-9
Metrics:
Muccini H., Polini A., Ricci F., Bertolino A.
Modern systems are increasingly required to be capable to evolve at run-time, in particular allowing for the dynamic plugging of new features. It is important that this evolution happens preserving some established properties (which can concern the structure, the interaction patterns, or crucial extra-functional properties, such as reliability or security), and due to dynamicity this needs to be checked at run-time, as the changes occur. In this work we consider evolving component-based systems formed by a kernel architecture to which new components can be plugged in at run-time, and introduce the MOSAICO approach for the run-time monitoring of architectural properties. MOSAICO uses Aspect-oriented technologies for instrumenting and monitoring the system according to selected architectural properties. MOSAICO can handle evolving black-box component systems since it continuously watches the events occurring at the extension points of the kernel architecture.The application of a prototype implementation of MOSAICO, capable to handle interaction pattern properties, is illustrated on the NewsFeeder case study.Source: Component-Based Software Engineering. 10th International Symposium CBSE 2007, pp. 124–139, Medford, MA, USA, 9-11 July 2007
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-73551-9
Metrics:
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2007
Contribution to book
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Systematic generation of XML instances to test complex software applications
Bertolino A., Gao J., Marchetti E., Polini A.
We introduce the XPT approach for the automated systematic generation of XML instances which conform to a given XML Schema, and its implementation into the proof-of-concept tool TAXI. XPT can be used to automatize the black-box testing of any general application that expects in input the XML instances. We generate a comprehensive set of instances by sampling all the possible combinations of elements within the schema, applying and adapting the well known Category-Partition strategy for functional testing. Originally, XPT has been conceived for application to the e-Learning domain, within which we briefly discuss some examples.Source: Rapid Integration of Software Engineering Techniques, pp. 114–129, 2007
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-71876-5
Metrics:
Bertolino A., Gao J., Marchetti E., Polini A.
We introduce the XPT approach for the automated systematic generation of XML instances which conform to a given XML Schema, and its implementation into the proof-of-concept tool TAXI. XPT can be used to automatize the black-box testing of any general application that expects in input the XML instances. We generate a comprehensive set of instances by sampling all the possible combinations of elements within the schema, applying and adapting the well known Category-Partition strategy for functional testing. Originally, XPT has been conceived for application to the e-Learning domain, within which we briefly discuss some examples.Source: Rapid Integration of Software Engineering Techniques, pp. 114–129, 2007
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-71876-5
Metrics:
See at:
www.springerlink.com | CNR ExploRA