DesCOTS-SL: A Tool for the Selection of Software Products

Editor's Notes

• #4: Many products are available in the COTS market nowadays; Selecting the more appropriate for the needs of a consumer is not an easy task, One the one hand, it may be difficult to know which aspects have to be considered in the available products. On the other hand, It may be difficult the identification of which type of component is necessary In the following slides, I'm going to explain how the DesCOTS deals with these two problems.
• #5: In DesCOTS we use quality models as a basis for the selection of products in the COTS Marketplace. The quality models consist on a set of quality entities and metrics that facilitate the evaluation of products. And, the quality entities are the checklist of aspects that the consumers have to consider in order to define the requirements, that may be specified as restrictions on the values of these quality entities. Applying requirements in the evaluations of the different products we can find the selected products that follow them. Our system proposes to have one quality model for each domain of COTS Component existent in the COTS market.
• #6: The quality framework of DesCOTS is based on the ISO 9126-1 standard. So, our quality models are structured as hierarchies of characteristics, subcharacteristics and attributes, where attributes may be basic or derived depending on if they are further decomposed, and one attribute may be related with more than one subcharacteristic. All attributes have associated metrics to evaluate them. Basic attributes may have defined simple metrics as for example boolean or string, and structured metrics as for example sets or tuples. Derived attribues have a metrics with a formula associated which establish the value of the attribute from the value of its subattributes. In the case of Characteristics and subcharacteristics we use them mainly for the classification of attributes and most of the times they do not have associated metrics. However, we allow to assign them subjective metrics, that are metrics for which it is not necessary a measurement protocol.
• #7: For the second problem, that is, the identification of which type of component the consumer needs to select, DesCOTS manages a taxonomy of categories and domains, as the one showed in this slide. This taxonomy is useful because: One the one hand, it gives facilities for helping the users to navigate through the categories and domains. These facilities are questions and answers that help the user to discover the domain of the product that he wants to evaluate or that he wants to select. One the other hand, for organizing the information managed by our system. There are three kinds of elements in DesCOTS that may be associated to domains, which are: the first is the quality models that are constructed for the different domains. the seconde is the products that belong to domains, and third is the COTS selection projects that need to select a product of the domain.
• #8: For the second problem, that is, the identification of which type of component the consumer needs to select, DesCOTS manages a taxonomy of categories and domains, as the one showed in this slide. This taxonomy is useful because: One the one hand, it gives facilities for helping the users to navigate through the categories and domains. These facilities are questions and answers that help the user to discover the domain of the product that he wants to evaluate or that he wants to select. One the other hand, for organizing the information managed by our system. There are three kinds of elements in DesCOTS that may be associated to domains, which are: the first is the quality models that are constructed for the different domains. the seconde is the products that belong to domains, and third is the COTS selection projects that need to select a product of the domain.
• #9: For the second problem, that is, the identification of which type of component the consumer needs to select, DesCOTS manages a taxonomy of categories and domains, as the one showed in this slide. This taxonomy is useful because: One the one hand, it gives facilities for helping the users to navigate through the categories and domains. These facilities are questions and answers that help the user to discover the domain of the product that he wants to evaluate or that he wants to select. One the other hand, for organizing the information managed by our system. There are three kinds of elements in DesCOTS that may be associated to domains, which are: the first is the quality models that are constructed for the different domains. the seconde is the products that belong to domains, and third is the COTS selection projects that need to select a product of the domain.
• #10: In order to give support to the presented approach, DesCOTS is decomposed in four systems that are implemented by the following tools: QM: may be used by users expert in COTS domains and it helps in the construction and management of quality models associated to the domains of the taxonomy. EV: is the one that I’m going to present in this talk, it may be used by providers of COTS or domain experts and it helps in the evaluation of COTS products, taking into account the quality entities and metrics of the quality model corresponding to the domain to which the product belongs. SL: may be used by people interested in the selection of a COTS and it helps in the definition of requirements in a selection project. These requirements are defined taking into account the quality model corresponding to the domain to which the product to be selected belongs. Finally, AD: should be used by the administrator of DesCOTS and it allows the maintenance of the taxonomy used for the rest of the tools, the validation of quality models in order to allow its use in the selection of products and the management of the users of the whole system.
• #12: When the user starts the tool, the taxonomy of categories and domains is shown as a hierarchy in a taxonomy browser. The identification of a domain in the taxonomy may be done in two modes. The expert mode is for users that know well the organization of the taxonomy, and it consists on opening and closing the scopes of the taxonomy looking for the desired category or domain. In the following slides we will see how an expert user browses the taxonomy going from its root that corresponds to the "Software Applications" category to the "Collaboration Software" category that is an intermediate category.
• #17: SCREEN 1 Here we have the screen that appears when a user starts the tool. In the left you can see the taxonomy browser, that presents the root of the taxonomy and two subcategories: Business Applications and Home Applications. Taking into account that we want to evaluate a mail server tool, I open the Business Applications category. SCREEN 2 This category has two subcategories: Single-User Systems and Multi-User Systems. A mail server is a tool that is used by multiple users, so, I open this category. SCREEN 3 In multi-user systems the taxonomy has two subcategories the one of the software that is used just by people of the organization and the one of software used also by clients and external people. I choose the Internal Software category. SCREEN 4 So, I arrive to the collaboration software category.
• #25: SCREEN 1 As you can see, there are two products already created for the Mail Servers tool domain: Cyrus and Eudora. And we choose to add a new product. SCREEN 2 The window for registering the data of the new product appears. And we have to introduce its name, version, and supplier. Once introduced we may press the button to create it. SCREEN 3 The new product appears in the list of mail server products. And we may observe which are the options that we have on a product, which are to modify its data, delete the product or manage its evaluations.
• #26: SCREEN 1 As you can see, there are two products already created for the Mail Servers tool domain: Cyrus and Eudora. And we choose to add a new product. SCREEN 2 The window for registering the data of the new product appears. And we have to introduce its name, version, and supplier. Once introduced we may press the button to create it. SCREEN 3 The new product appears in the list of mail server products. And we may observe which are the options that we have on a product, which are to modify its data, delete the product or manage its evaluations.
• #28: SCREEN 1 As you can see, there are two products already created for the Mail Servers tool domain: Cyrus and Eudora. And we choose to add a new product. SCREEN 2 The window for registering the data of the new product appears. And we have to introduce its name, version, and supplier. Once introduced we may press the button to create it. SCREEN 3 The new product appears in the list of mail server products. And we may observe which are the options that we have on a product, which are to modify its data, delete the product or manage its evaluations.
• #29: SCREEN 1 As you can see, there are two products already created for the Mail Servers tool domain: Cyrus and Eudora. And we choose to add a new product. SCREEN 2 The window for registering the data of the new product appears. And we have to introduce its name, version, and supplier. Once introduced we may press the button to create it. SCREEN 3 The new product appears in the list of mail server products. And we may observe which are the options that we have on a product, which are to modify its data, delete the product or manage its evaluations.
• #30: SCREEN 1 As you can see, there are two products already created for the Mail Servers tool domain: Cyrus and Eudora. And we choose to add a new product. SCREEN 2 The window for registering the data of the new product appears. And we have to introduce its name, version, and supplier. Once introduced we may press the button to create it. SCREEN 3 The new product appears in the list of mail server products. And we may observe which are the options that we have on a product, which are to modify its data, delete the product or manage its evaluations.
• #31: SCREEN 1 As you can see, there are two products already created for the Mail Servers tool domain: Cyrus and Eudora. And we choose to add a new product. SCREEN 2 The window for registering the data of the new product appears. And we have to introduce its name, version, and supplier. Once introduced we may press the button to create it. SCREEN 3 The new product appears in the list of mail server products. And we may observe which are the options that we have on a product, which are to modify its data, delete the product or manage its evaluations.
• #37: SCREEN 1 If we choose to manage the evaluations of the tool TestMailServer the evaluations manager is opened and the user may choose to add a new evaluation of the product. SCREEN 2 When an evaluation is created the tool presents to the user the quality model of the domain to which the product belongs. The same happens when an evaluation is edited. SCREEN 3 It is not possible to have more than one evaluation under construction. Since we have just created a new one, now it is not possible to create another. On the other hand an evaluation may not be validated until it has values for all the quality entities with assigned metrics. So, in this case we can not validate this evaluation because we have not evaluated any quality entity.
• #38: SCREEN 1 If we choose to manage the evaluations of the tool TestMailServer the evaluations manager is opened and the user may choose to add a new evaluation of the product. SCREEN 2 When an evaluation is created the tool presents to the user the quality model of the domain to which the product belongs. The same happens when an evaluation is edited. SCREEN 3 It is not possible to have more than one evaluation under construction. Since we have just created a new one, now it is not possible to create another. On the other hand an evaluation may not be validated until it has values for all the quality entities with assigned metrics. So, in this case we can not validate this evaluation because we have not evaluated any quality entity.
• #39: SCREEN 1 If we choose to manage the evaluations of the tool TestMailServer the evaluations manager is opened and the user may choose to add a new evaluation of the product. SCREEN 2 When an evaluation is created the tool presents to the user the quality model of the domain to which the product belongs. The same happens when an evaluation is edited. SCREEN 3 It is not possible to have more than one evaluation under construction. Since we have just created a new one, now it is not possible to create another. On the other hand an evaluation may not be validated until it has values for all the quality entities with assigned metrics. So, in this case we can not validate this evaluation because we have not evaluated any quality entity.
• #40: SCREEN 1 If we choose to manage the evaluations of the tool TestMailServer the evaluations manager is opened and the user may choose to add a new evaluation of the product. SCREEN 2 When an evaluation is created the tool presents to the user the quality model of the domain to which the product belongs. The same happens when an evaluation is edited. SCREEN 3 It is not possible to have more than one evaluation under construction. Since we have just created a new one, now it is not possible to create another. On the other hand an evaluation may not be validated until it has values for all the quality entities with assigned metrics. So, in this case we can not validate this evaluation because we have not evaluated any quality entity.
• #41: SCREEN 1 If we choose to manage the evaluations of the tool TestMailServer the evaluations manager is opened and the user may choose to add a new evaluation of the product. SCREEN 2 When an evaluation is created the tool presents to the user the quality model of the domain to which the product belongs. The same happens when an evaluation is edited. SCREEN 3 It is not possible to have more than one evaluation under construction. Since we have just created a new one, now it is not possible to create another. On the other hand an evaluation may not be validated until it has values for all the quality entities with assigned metrics. So, in this case we can not validate this evaluation because we have not evaluated any quality entity.