Dept. of Computer Science
York University
Agent-oriented approaches are becoming popular in software
engineering, both as architectural frameworks, and as modeling
formalisms for requirements engineering and design. i* is an informal
diagram-based language for early-stage requirements engineering that
supports the modeling of social dependencies between agents and how
various process design choices affect the agents' goals both
functional and non-functional. ConGolog is an expressive logic-based
formalism for specifying processes that involves multiple agents.
Tools are being developed to support the validation ConGolog of
process models though simulation and verification. The two formalisms
complement each other well, and in this work, we develop a methodology
for agent-oriented requirements engineering that involves their
combined use. The i* SR-diagram language is extended with process
specification annotations, which allow the SR model of a system to be
refined and then mapped into a ConGolog model. The mapping must
satisfy a set of mapping rules, which ensure that it specifies which
elements in the two models are related and that the models are
consistent. The methodology is illustrated on a simple meeting
scheduling application example.