SQUARE Tool

A robust tool to support SQUARE has been developed by a team of Carnegie Mellon Master of Software Engineering students with oversight by Carnegie Mellon University staff within CERT, part of the Software Engineering Institute, and CyLab. The tool, designed for use by stakeholders, requirements engineers, and administrators, aids in all nine steps of SQUARE by

• recording definitions and searching and adding new terms
• identifying the project business goals, assets, and security goals
• adding or editing links to project artifacts
• performing risk assessment and identify threats
• comparing elicitation techniques
• linking the elicited requirements to goals, risks, and artifacts
• classifying requirements based on predefined categories
• prioritizing security requirements
• inspecting requirements, viewing traceability to risks and artifacts, and exporting requirements to tools such as Requisite Pro

The tool is available for free. You can use it two ways: 1) If you want to experiment with it, you can use it on the Carnegie Mellon website. Note that you will need a user ID and password; contact Nancy Mead at nrm [at] sei.cmu.edu to request log-in information. 2) You can also use the tool on one of your projects. It will need to be installed at your location; download the files below to install it.

Download and Install the Files

Download the files and follow these steps to complete the installation. Note that you will need to fill out a form to download the files.

1. Prepare the Server

1. Install JDK 6.
2. Install Apache on Tomcat.
3. Install MySQL. Square runs on MySQL 5.
   

2. Prepare the Database

Find Script db-scripts\install-clean.sql or Script db-scripts\install-with-demo-data.sql.

1. Create a root account in MySQL. (This should have been done as part of the MySQL installation.)
   
2. Included in this folder is a script for creating a database and all the necessary tables for the SQUARE tool. Run this script to create the database.
   
3. Create a user for the newly created SQUARE database.
   
4. See MySQL Reference for more information on creating databases and users.

3. Update the SQUARE Application's Database URL, Username, and Password

1. The property files are: export.xsl, square.properties, defaultTerms.xml, app.properties, resetPassword.vm, log4j.properties, and userCreated.vm. Make sure these are in the square_properties folder in the installation folder.
2. Update the values for the 'url', 'username', and 'password' value in square.properties, with your database URL, the username, and password respectively. Optionally you can update the other properties. DO NOT use localhost as a database URL. Use the full server name.
3. Place the property files in a folder that's on Tomcat's shared classloader's classpath. This is critical. If the property files are not on the classpath, the application would behave unpredictably.
4. If you don't have any folders on the shared classloader's classpath, or if you want to add a new folder, then edit ${tomcat_home}/conf/catalina.properties. Add the folder to the list of comma-separated classpath folders assigned to the shared.loader property.

4. Complete the SQUARE Tool Installation

1. Stop the Tomcat application server.
2. Copy the war (Find in Binaries\war.zip) to {Tomcat installation directory}/webapps/.
3. Start up the Tomcat application server.
4. You should be able to access it on the following URL: {Tomcat server URL}/Square
5. Log in using the following credentials: admin/yessir
   

Feedback

We welcome your feedback about your experience using this tool. Please direct your comments to Nancy Mead, the principal investigator, at nrm [at] sei.cmu.edu.

Last updated December 4, 2009