Using i* and UML for Blockchain Oriented Software Engineering: Strengths,Weaknesses, Lacks and Complementarity

Anne Sofie Vingerhoets,Samedi Heng,Yves Wautelet

doi:10.7250/csimq.2021-26.02

Abstract

New blockchain-based projects do appear every day. The technology has indeed been popularized by cryptocurrencies but is now gaining interest in various domains and new types of applications are evaluated constantly. Understanding the impact of blockchain adoption on the organization and the internals of blockchain-related behavior nevertheless remains a challenge for managers but also for IT professionals. This article studies how two existing organizational and software modeling languages can be fit to document a blockchain development project in Supply Chain Management (SCM) at its earliest stages. These two frameworks are i* on the one side and the Unified Modeling Language (UML) use case and sequence diagrams on the other side. The real life project used as a case study in this application is ‘Farm-to-Fork’ where a blockchain solution for the Supply Chain (SC) of farm animals is developed. The application of the frameworks is intended to identify their strengths and weaknesses. An extension of i* is proposed to deal with blockchain privacy issues as well as laws and norms. We finally point to the complementarity of i* and UML use case and sequence diagrams in a Blockchain-Oriented Software Engineering (BOSE) context. The i* framework indeed supports early requirements to understand the impact of the project on stakeholders while UML use case and sequence diagrams support the late requirements and the design by depicting the use of blockchain and some of its behavioral mechanisms.

Highlights

Blockchain, through its decentralized nature, is seen nowadays as a very promising technology with applications that go far beyond the domain of cryptocurrencies
The study in this paper further investigates and elaborates on this notably by applying extensions to i* as proposed by Ben Hamadi et al [13] but not developed in there; this has been done on a genuine case study
As for i* in the previous section, this section gives an overview of the pros and cons of using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) use cases and sequence diagrams for Blockchain-Oriented Software Engineering (BOSE) in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) domain

Summary

Introduction

Blockchain, through its decentralized nature, is seen nowadays as a very promising technology with applications that go far beyond the domain of cryptocurrencies. This article studies two existing modeling frameworks that could be used for such a purpose with a specific focus on the Supply Chain (SC) domain These frameworks are further refined to better fit the needs of blockchain-based modeling. Blockchain technology provides a highly secure method of dealing with transactions by using asymmetrical cryptography and hash functions [15] While these are all primary benefits of blockchain, [16] describes the decentralized approach as probably the biggest advantage, because intermediaries are made completely redundant through a consensus mechanism in which data is verified by all participants, distributed and stored across different locations. Storing the database at different places reduces the likelihood of hacking and loss of data in case the system goes down This results in a highly available system, where every node always has the same up-to-date version of the truth. Data is immediately distributed and agreed upon [15]

Methods

Results

Conclusion