University of Toronto

Institute Name: University of Toronto, Department of Computer Science

Description: The Department of Computer Science of the University of Toronto is widely recognised as one of the leading centres of research and advanced training in computer science in North America. It has some 35 permanent positions, about 30 research associates and 140 full-time graduate students. It offers a number of undergraduate programmes in computer science, as well as graduate programmes leading to an MSc or PhD degree. Its research programme is funded by government and industry organizations and includes a number of large industrial projects.

The Department is organised into a number of research groups. The group which will contribute to this project is the knowledge and database systems group headed by John Mylopoulos. This group has conducted research on the application of knowledge representation to databases and software engineering for more than 15 years. Within the scope of this research, the group designed a number of languages for requirements modelling and software modelling, including the languages RML and Telos. More recently, the group has conducted research on the representation of non-functional requirements and the modelling of large organizations in support of the requirements engineering process. The group conducting this research includes two research associates and four full-time graduate students, in addition to external collaborators such as Matthias Jarke (Technical University of Aachen), Eric Dubois (University of Namur) and Panos Constantopoulos (Universit of Crete).

The research in requirements engineering carried out at the University of Toronto during 1996 included:

• Tools for Organizational Analysis and Design: Eric Yu, Yves Lesperance, and John Mylopoulos completed a summer project involving seven undergraduate and graduate students who worked on the implementation of tools and the development of a methodology for organizational analysis and design. The work adopts the i* framework [Yu 1995], the notion of softgoal [Chung 1993] and the CONGOLOG system for specifying and simulating complex actions [Levesque 1996]. Several examples have been worked out which indicate how one combines the concepts offered by these frameworks to capture organizational objectives and generate business processes which meet them, subject to various global contraints. An early description of this research project can be found in [Yu 1996].
• Book on Non-Funtional Requirements: Lawrence Chung, Brian Nixon, Eric Yu, and John Mylopoulos are writing a book on non-functional requirements. This book, to be published by Kluwer next year, is based on Lawrence Chung's PhD thesis proposing a qualitative framework for representing and reasoning with non-functional requirements. The book includes an introduction to the representational framework, also subsequent work done by the authors on applying the framework .
• Dealing with Performance Requirements for Information Systems: Brian Nixon is completing his long-awaited PhD thesis, adopting earlier work on non-functional requirements to the problem of dealing with performance requirements for a particular class of software systems (information systems). Among other things, the thesis proposes a neat classification of performance issues and when to deal with each as one moves from a conceptual design of the information system to an actual implementation.
• International IEEE Symposium on Requirements Engineering: John Mylopoulos, Eric Yu, and Lawrence Chung were all busy with various duties in connection with the 1997 International IEEE Symposium on Requirements Engineering that will be held in Annapolis Maryland, January 6-10, 1997. John Mylopoulos was programme chair. Eric Yu and Lawrence Chung served on the programme committee.

Researchers associated with the project:

Prof. John Mylopoulos

Prof. Eric Yu

Dr. Lawrence Chung

Mr. Yves Lesperance

Mr. Brian Nixon

Brief CVs of Key Researchers:

Name: Prof. John Mylopoulos

Nationality: Canada

Academic Qualifications & Experience: John Mylopoulos is professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His research interests include knowledge representation and conceptual modelling, covering languages, implementations and applications. His past research accomplishments include requirements and design languages for information systems, the adoption of database implementation techniques for large knowledge bases and the application of knowledge bases to software repositories. He is currently leading a number of research projects and is principal investigator of both a national and a provincial Centre of Excellence for Information Technology.

Mylopoulos received his PhD. degree from Princeton University in 1970. His publication list includes more than 120 refereed journal and conference proceedings papers and three editted books. He is the recipient of the first ever Outstanding Services Award given out by the Canadian AI Society (1992), also a co-recipient of the best paper award of the 1994 International Conference on Software Engineering. His permanent address is: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 6 King's College Road, Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4.

Selected Publications:

Constantopoulos, P., Jarke, M., Mylopoulos, J. and Vassiliou, Y.(1994): "The Software Information Base: A Server for Reuse", Very Large Databases Journal

Mylopoulos, J., Chung, L. and Nixon, B.(1992): "Representing and Using Non-Functional Requirements: A Process-Oriented Approach" IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

Jarke, M., Mylopoulos, J., Schmidt, J. and Vassiliou, Y.(1992): "DAIDA: An Environment for Evolving Information Systems", ACM Transactions on Information Systems

Greenspan, S., Mylopoulos, J. and Borgida.(1994): A., "On Formal Requirements Modelling Languages", Proceedings Sixteenth International Conference on Software Engineering, Sorrento, Italy

Yu, E. and Mylopoulos, J.(1994): "Understanding ``Why'' in Software Process Modelling, Analysis, and Design', Proceedings Sixteenth International Conference on Software Engineering, Sorrento, Italy

Yu, E. and Mylopoulos, J.(1995): "From E-R to 'A-R' -- Modelling Strategic Actor Relationships for Business Process Re-Engineering", International Journal of Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems, (to appear); also appeared in the proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on the Entity-Relationship Approach, Manchester

Borgida, A., Mylopoulos, J. and Reiter, R.(1995): "On the Frame Problem in Procedure Specifications", IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (to appear). References

Chung, L., Representing and Using Non-Functional Requirements: A Process-Oriented Approach, PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 1993.

Levesque, H. et al (1996), "GOLOG: A Logic programming Language for Dynamic Domains", Journal of Logic Programming (to appear).

Nixon, B., Dealing with Performance Requirements for Information Systems, PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, (forthcoming). .

Yu, E., Modelling Strategic Relationships for Process Reengineering, PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 1995.

Yu, E., Mylopoulos, J. and Lesperance, Y., "AI Models for Business Process Reengineering", IEEE Expert, August 1996.

Contact Details:

Principal Investigator: Prof. John Mylopoulos,

Address: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 6 King's College Road, Toronto, M5S 1A4, CANADA

Telephone number: + 1 416 978 5180

Telefax number: + 1 416 978 1455

EMail: jm@cs.toronto.edu

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