piStar Tool – A Pluggable Online Tool for Goal Modeling

Abstract

Since its proposal in the nineties, the i* goal modeling proposal has spawned a number of complementary work, including: language extensions, automated reasoning, and transformation to/from i* models. In order to automate their proposals, researchers need to either create a new tool from scratch or to extend an existing tool. In fact, the i* Wiki lists 29 different i* modeling tools. A common approach for creating such tools has been to use the Eclipse tools as a foundation (12 listed tools), which presents complexity issues of its own. The main idea of this work is the creation of an i* modeling tool with low entry barriers for developers wishing to extend it. Our piStar tool can be extended with JavaScript, requiring no specific development tools. Alternatively, developers can adopt their language of choice (such as Java and Python), using piStar models as input either through manually downloading the model file or by sending it for processing through a REST request.