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Problems in the analysis of requirements often lead to failures when developing software systems. This problem is nowadays being faced by requirements engineering. The early involvement of all kinds of stakeholders in the development of such a system and a structured process to elicitate and analyse requirements have made it a crucial factor as a first step in software development. The increasing complexity of modern softwaresystems though leads to a rising amount of information which has to be dealt with during analysis. Without the support of appropriate tools this would be almost impossible to do. Especially in bigger projects, which tend to be spatially distributed, an effective requirements engineering could not be implemented without this kind of support. Today there is a wide range of tools dealing with this matter. They have been in use since some time now and, in their most recent versions, realize the most important aspects of requirements engineering. Within the scope of this thesis some of these tools will be analysed, focussing on both the major functionalities concerning the management of requirements and the repository of these tools. The results of this analyis will be integrated into a reference model.
The publication of freely available and machine-readable information has increased significantly in the last years. Especially the Linked Data initiative has been receiving a lot of attention. Linked Data is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and anybody can simply publish their data in RDF and link it to other datasets. The structure is similar to the World Wide Web where individual HTML documents are connected with links. Linked Data entities are identified by URIs which are dereferenceable to retrieve information describing the entity. Additionally, so called SPARQL endpoints can be used to access the data with an algebraic query language (SPARQL) similar to SQL. By integrating multiple SPARQL endpoints it is possible to create a federation of distributed RDF data sources which acts like one big data store.
In contrast to the federation of classical relational database systems there are some differences for federated RDF data. RDF stores are accessed either via SPARQL endpoints or by resolving URIs. There is no coordination between RDF data sources and machine-readable meta data about a source- data is commonly limited or not available at all. Moreover, there is no common directory which can be used to discover RDF data sources or ask for sources which offer specific data. The federation of distributed and linked RDF data sources has to deal with various challenges. In order to distribute queries automatically, suitable data sources have to be selected based on query details and information that is available about the data sources. Furthermore, the minimization of query execution time requires optimization techniques that take into account the execution cost for query operators and the network communication overhead for contacting individual data sources. In this thesis, solutions for these problems are discussed. Moreover, SPLENDID is presented, a new federation infrastructure for distributed RDF data sources which uses optimization techniques based on statistical information.
The provision of electronic participation services (e-participation) is a complex socio-technical undertaking that needs comprehensive design and implementation strategies. E-participation service providers, in the most cases administrations and governments, struggle with changing requirements that demand more transparency, better connectivity and increased collaboration among different actors. At the same time, less staff are available. As a result, recent research assesses only a minority of e-participation services as successful. The challenge is that the e-participation domain lacks comprehensive approaches to design and implement (e-)participation services. Enterprise Architecture (EA) frameworks have evolved in information systems research as an approach to guide the development of complex socio-technical systems. This approach can guide the design and implementation services, if the collection of organisations with the commonly held goal to provide participation services is understood as an E Participation Enterprise (EE). However, research & practice in the e participation domain has not yet exploited EA frameworks. Consequently, the problem scope that motivates this dissertation is the existing gap in research to deploy EA frameworks in e participation design and implementation. The research question that drives this research is: What methodical and technical guides do architecture frameworks provide that can be used to design and implement better and successful e participation?
This dissertation presents a literature study showing that existing approaches have not covered yet the challenges of comprehensive e participation design and implementation. Accordingly, the research moves on to investigate established EA frameworks such as the Zachman Framework, TOGAF, the DoDAF, the FEA, the ARIS, and the ArchiMate for their use. While the application of these frameworks in e participation design and implementation is possible, an integrated approach is lacking so far. The synthesis of literature review and practical insights in design and implementation of e participation services from four projects show the challenges of adapting architecture frameworks for this domain. However, the research shows also the potential of a combination of the different approaches. Consequently, the research moves on to develop the E-Participation Architecture Framework (EPART-Framework). Therefore, the dissertation applies design science research including literature review and action research. Two independent settings test an initial EPART-Framework version. The results yield into the EPART-Framework presented in this dissertation.
The EPART-Framework comprises of the EPART-Metamodel with six EPART-Viewpoints, which frame the stakeholder concerns: the Participation Scope, the Participant Viewpoint, the Participation Viewpoint, the Data & Information Viewpoint, the E-participation Viewpoint, and Implementation & Governance Viewpoint. The EPART-Method supports the stakeholders to design the EE and implement e participation and stores its output in an architecture description and a solution repository. It consists of five consecutive phases accompanied by requirements management: Initiation, Design, Implementation and Preparation, Participation, and Evaluation. The EPART-Framework fills the gap between the e participation domain and the enterprise architecture framework domain. The evaluation gives reasonable evidence that the framework is a valuable addition in academia and in practice to improve e-participation design and implementation. The same time, it shows opportunities for future research to extend and advance the framework.