SHF:Small: Techniques for Pruning Problem and Solution Spaces to Enable Methodical Exploration of Software Development Alternatives

SHF：Small：修剪问题和解决方案空间的技术，以实现软件开发替代方案的系统探索

基本信息

批准号：
1618231
负责人：
Nenad Medvidovic
金额：
$ 50万
依托单位：
University of Southern California
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2016
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2016-06-01 至 2019-05-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1618231&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
SHF Small Techniques Pruning Problem

项目摘要

Software engineers make thousands of design decisions during development. That process remains manual and error-prone, while new research advances tend to be partial and disconnected from one another. A key reason is that prevailing approaches treat uniformly software systems across application domains (e.g., games, banking, avionics). The variations among different kinds of software systems have led some researchers to narrow their focus to specific domains. Domain-specific approaches work well, but only within the confines of a domain. This project is developing simple, but powerful techniques that enable software engineers to extend the benefits of domain-specificity across diverse domains, and that guide and support engineers in modeling and analyzing complex problems.The project furthers the advances to-date in model-driven engineering (MDE). MDE has two known shortcomings: (1) existing techniques generate software modeling support for an application domain, but not analysis and simulation tools; (2) implementation generation is restricted to specific domains, languages, and toolsets. This is coupled with two additional shortcomings: (3) modeling editors generated by MDE toolsets provide no support for design space exploration; (4) optimal system deployment depends on parameters that form a massive space of options. This project targets the above four shortcomings. It defines an MDE platform with extensible semantics and automatically synthesizes model interpreters for software system design, analysis, simulation, and generation. The biggest envisioned impact of this project is in its potential to change how software engineers approach development. In particular, the burden of making a possibly overwhelming number of non-critical, but also non-obvious, decisions is shifted to tools, allowing engineers to focus on things that matter. This presents an opportunity to change the way software engineers are trained, from the predominant one-size-fits-all curricula of today to the more appropriate domain-driven specializations.

软件工程师在开发过程中做出数千个设计决策。这一过程仍然是手动的并且容易出错，而新的研究进展往往是片面的并且彼此脱节。一个关键原因是，流行的方法统一对待跨应用领域（例如游戏、银行、航空电子设备）的软件系统。不同类型的软件系统之间的差异导致一些研究人员将注意力缩小到特定领域。特定于域的方法效果很好，但仅限于域的范围内。该项目正在开发简单但功能强大的技术，使软件工程师能够跨不同领域扩展领域特定性的好处，并指导和支持工程师建模和分析复杂问题。该项目进一步推进了模型驱动领域的最新进展工程（MDE）。 MDE 有两个已知的缺点：（1）现有技术为应用领域生成软件建模支持，但不能生成分析和仿真工具； (2) 实现生成仅限于特定领域、语言和工具集。这还有两个额外的缺点：(3) MDE 工具集生成的建模编辑器不提供对设计空间探索的支持； (4) 最佳的系统部署取决于构成大量选项空间的参数。本项目针对以上四个缺点。它定义了一个具有可扩展语义的MDE平台，并自动合成用于软件系统设计、分析、仿真和生成的模型解释器。该项目最大的预期影响是它有可能改变软件工程师的开发方式。特别是，做出大量非关键但非显而易见的决策的负担转移到了工具上，使工程师能够专注于重要的事情。这提供了一个改变软件工程师培训方式的机会，从当今占主导地位的一刀切课程到更合适的领域驱动专业化。