LTSA conformance testing to architectural design of LMS using ontology

Abstract

This paper proposes a new methodology for checking conformance of the software architectural design of Learning Management System (LMS) to Learning Technology System Architecture (LTSA). In our approach, the architectural designing of LMS follows the formal modeling style of Acme. An ontology is built to represent the LTSA rules and the software architecture in Acme style. Conformity of the design with LTSA rules is tested by reasoning the ontology with the query language SPARQL. A Java-based plug-in system is introduced to implement functionalities like loading the elements of the architectural design into the ontology, mapping the architectural elements with LTSA elements, and performing the conformance test. The advantage of the proposed methodology is two-folded. First, it verifies an important software quality attribute – conformance to technical standard – at an early stage of development, like high-level design phase. Secondly, instead of the conventional manual checklist based approach of conformance testing, this methodology focuses on an automated way to finding the conformance level of the system under check.