rasaeco 0.0.15

Analyze software requirements in AECO industry

RASAECO (“Requirements Analysis for Software in AECO Industry”) is a tool we developed within the BIMprove Project to help us analyze the software requirements after the finished elicitation phase.

Introduction

Digitalization is forging its path in the architecture, engineering, construction, operation (AECO) industry. This trend demands not only solutions for data governance but also sophisticated cyber-physical systems with a high variety of stakeholder background and very complex requirements. Existing approaches to general requirements engineering ignore the context of the AECO industry. This makes it harder for the software engineers usually lacking the knowledge of the industry context to elicit, analyze and structure the requirements and to effectively communicate with AECO professionals.

To live up to that task, we implemented a tool for collecting AECO-specific software requirements as scenarios with the aim to foster reuse and leverage domain knowledge. The tool is based on a common pre-defined scenario space. It allows you to represent and relate the scenarios in that scenario space, as well as specifically mark how the individual parts of the scenario relate to other scenarios and the space in general.

The scenarios are written in markdown with additional special markup tags. The tool renders the scenarios into a collection of HTML documents giving you an introductory overview as well as pleasant reading experience based on multi-media and hyper-text.

Please refer to the corresponding publication for more details (see the next section, Contributors and Citation).

Contributors and Citation

The tools was developed by:

• Marko Ristin ([e-mail]),

• Dag Fjeld Edvardsen ([e-mail]), and

• Hans Wernher van de Venn ([e-mail]).

If you want to cite the tool, please cite the corresponding publication:

Ristin, Marko and Edvardsen, Dag Fjeld and van de Venn, Hans Wernher: “RASAECO: Requirements Analysis of Software for the AECO Industry”, 29th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, 2021.

Installation

Single-File Release

Please download and unzip the latest release from the GitHub release page.

From PyPI

The tool is also available on PyPI.

Create a virtual environment:

python -m venv venv-rasaeco

Activate it (in Windows):

venv-rasaeco\Scripts\activate

or in Linux:

source venv-rasaeco/bin/activate

Install the tool in the virtual environment:

pip3 install rasaeco

Usage

Start your native Windows command prompt.

(Please be careful not to start “Developer Command Prompt for VS 2019” or similar as it includes a 32bit version of Python3 in its environment!)

Change to the directory where you unzipped the release.

Render once

Render the scenarios in-place once:

pyrasaeco-render.exe once --scenarios_dir c:\some\path\to\scenarios

(Change c:\some\path\to\scenarios to fit your system.)

Open the scenario ontology with your browser from: c:\some\path\to\scenarios\ontology.html.

(Don’t forget to change c:\some\path\to\scenarios again to fit your system.)

Render continuously

Monitor the scenario files and re-render on changes:

pyrasaeco-render.exe continuously --scenarios_dir c:\some\path\to\scenarios

(Change c:\some\path\to\scenarios to fit your system.)

Open the scenario ontology with your browser from: c:\some\path\to\scenarios\ontology.html.

(Don’t forget to change c:\some\path\to\scenarios again to fit your system.)

Render continuously + automatic refresh

pyrasaeco-render can also start a demo server for you so that you do not have to manually re-load in the browser. You have to specify the port and the server will be automatically started:

pyrasaeco-render.exe continuously
    --scenarios_dir c:\some\path\to\scenarios
    --port 8000

(Change c:\some\path\to\scenarios to fit your system.)

The ontology will be available on: http://localhost:8000.

Help

pyrasaeco-render.exe -h
pyrasaeco-render.exe once -h
pyrasaeco-render.exe continuously -h

Cheat-sheet

Directory Structure

Write documents in the following directory structure:

ontology/
    some-scenario/
        scenario.md
    some-group/
        another-scenario/
            scenario.md
        yet-another-scenario/
            scenario.md
...

The identifier of a scenarios is given by the POSIX path of the scenario directory relative to the ontology directory.

For example, some-scenario and some-group/another-scenario.

Header

Write a <rasaeco-meta> header at the beginning of a scenario.

Here is an example:

<rasaeco-meta>
{
    "title": "Some Scenario",
    "contact": "Marko Ristin <[e-mail]>, Somebody Else <[e-mail]>",
    "relations": [
        { "target": "some-group/another_scenario", "nature": "is instance of" }
        { "target": "some-group/yet_another_scenario", "nature": "refines" }
    ],
    "volumetric": [
        {
            "aspect_from": "as-planned", "aspect_to": "safety",
            "phase_from": "construction", "phase_to": "construction",
            "level_from": "site", "level_to": "site"
        }
    ]
}
</rasaeco-meta>

Aspects	Phases	Levels
as-planned as-observed divergence scheduling cost safety analytics	planning construction operation renovation demolition	device machine unit site company network

Tags in the Scenario

Tag text in markdown with XML tags.

Models. Models are defined as <model name="...">...</model>.

Model references are written using <modelref> tag:

The possible placements for the reception platform should be computed based on
the <modelref name="observed/main" />.

It is also possible to reference models from another scenario by writing the scenario identifier, followed by # and the model name:

This is a dummy reference to the model <modelref name="scaffolding#plan/main" />.

Definitions. Definitions are defined <def name="...">...</def>.

If you want to write (pseudo)code in the definition, use ``` (three backticks):

<def name="reception_platform">

```bim
reception_platform
    is IfcBuildingElementType modeled in observed/main
    with .ElementType == "ReceptionPlatform"
```

</def>

In general, give the name using singular form, snake_case and lower-case. For example, reception_platform.

Definition references are written using <ref> tag:

The <ref name="reception_platform" /> can not be appropriately fixed.

It is also possible to reference models from another scenario by writing the scenario identifier, followed by # and the definition name:

This is a dummy reference to the definition <ref name="scaffolding#scaffold" />.

We apply a couple of text transformations during rendering to improve the readability. The underscores in the references are replaced with spaces. If the reference is followed by an “s”, it will be automatically inflected to a plural.

For example,

The <ref name="misplaced_scaffold" />s are ...

will be rendered to:

The misplaced scaffolds are ...

Marking phase and level. Use <phase> and <level> to mark the phase in the building life cycle and hierarchy level of detail, respectively.

<phase name="planning">During the planning phase, the <ref name="scaffolds" />
are wrongly planed.</phase>

<phase name="construction">The <ref name="receptionPlatforms" /> can not be appropriately fixed
on <level name="site">the site</level>.</phase>

Test cases. Test cases are marked using <test name="...">...</test>. You can reference the individual tests using <testref name="..." />.

Analogous to <ref> and <modelref>, references to test cases extend across scenarios.

Acceptance criteria. Acceptance criteria are marked using <acceptance name="...">...</test>. You can reference the individual acceptance criteria using <acceptanceref name="..." />.

Analogous to <ref> and <modelref>, references to acceptance criteria extend across scenarios.

References to a scenario as a whole. You can reference a scenario from another scenario using <scenarioref name="..." />.

Further Examples

Please see Sample scenarios for further examples.

Known Issues

Markdown can be sometimes unintuitive when mixed with the mark-up (XML) tags. You have to be careful when inserting new lines as they are going to be automatically converted by marko library to <p>.

This can result in invalid HTML. For example, make sure you do not write:

<model name="something">first line

second line</model>

as this results in invalid HTML:

<p><model name="something">first line</p>
<p>second line</model></p>

Note the inverted </p> and </model>. This should be correctly written as:

<model name="something">

first line

second line

</model>

(Note the empty lines after the opening tag and before the closing tag, respectively.)