VDML4RS: a tool for reputation systems modeling and design

Reputation has a great influence on interactions between system providers and users (e.g. in e-commerce). Despite that, reputation systems implemented so far show many deficiencies and suffer from reliability problems. One of the causes is the lack of appropriate software engineering methodologies dedicated to requirements collection and design of reputation systems. On the other hand, business process modeling, service design and reputation system modeling share many needs (represent a variety of entities involved in the related domains), aims (improve services/business in order to meet the user's needs) and problems (they all involve stakeholders with very different backgrounds and skills). Starting from the intuition above, this paper proposes VDML4RS a tool for conceptual modeling of reputation systems. The aim is to provide a tool to represent reputation requirements of the system-to-be from the very beginning in the software development allowing mutual understanding between requirements engineers and stakeholders avoiding the socio-technical mismatch in communication that can delay and harm the development.