CI-P: Collaborative Research: Planning and Prototyping a Community-Wide Software Architecture Instrument

CI-P：协作研究：规划和原型设计社区范围的软件架构工具

• 批准号: 1629810
• 负责人: Mehdi Mirakhorli
• 金额: $ 3万
• 依托单位: Rochester Institute of Tech
• 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: 2016-08-01 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1629810&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CI; Collaborative; Research; Planning; Prototyping

The effort and cost of maintenance dominate activities in a software system's lifecycle. Over the past two decades, software architecture research has yielded many tools and techniques for understanding and maintaining the architectures of software systems. However, empirical research and technology transfer are impeded by myriad disjoint environments, lack of a shared research infrastructure, the costs of making tools robust, and lack of datasets needed to conduct architecture-oriented empirical research. Consequently, researchers and practitioners often repeat each other's efforts, thus limiting potential breakthroughs. This projects develops the plans and an initial prototype for an integration framework that assembles architecture-related techniques to enable maintenance-focused empirical research. The framework revolutionizes the future of software systems research and development. It facilitates the discovery and adoption of cutting-edge techniques and tools, and fosters much more effective university-industry collaboration than exists today. This planning project elicits and prioritizes the requirements, collects the community feedback, and develops a prototype for the Software Architecture INstrument (SAIN), a first-of-its-kind integration framework. SAIN comprises three principal components: (1) a catalogued library of tools for reverse engineering and analyzing software architectures; (2) a plug-and-play instrument for integrating the techniques to enable architecture-oriented empirical studies; and (3) a repository of Web-accessible software-architecture datasets and benchmarks. This planning project develops a proof-of-concept solution that demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed instrument, as well as the research activities enabled by this instrument. SAIN provides an effective, community-wide platform for software architecture research and practice through continuous integration of diverse tools. It supports architecture's central role in a broad range of software engineering activities. The framework comprises the first repository hosting large numbers of recovered architectures to enable researchers to effectively evaluate their techniques, and is aimed at reinvigorating empirical research in software architecture.

维护的工作量和成本在软件系统生命周期的活动中占主导地位。在过去的二十年中，软件架构研究已经产生了许多用于理解和维护软件系统架构的工具和技术。然而，实证研究和技术转让受到无数脱节环境、缺乏共享研究基础设施、使工具强大的成本以及缺乏进行面向架构的实证研究所需的数据集的阻碍。因此，研究人员和实践者经常重复彼此的努力，从而限制了潜在的突破。该项目为集成框架开发了计划和初始原型，该框架汇集了与体系结构相关的技术，以实现以维护为中心的实证研究。该框架彻底改变了软件系统研究和开发的未来。它促进了尖端技术和工具的发现和采用，并促进了比当今更有效的大学与行业合作。该规划项目引出需求并确定其优先级，收集社区反馈，并开发软件架构 INstrument (SAIN) 的原型，这是首个此类集成框架。 SAIN 包含三个主要组件：(1) 用于逆向工程和分析软件架构的编目工具库； (2) 一个即插即用的工具，用于集成技术以实现面向架构的实证研究； (3) 可通过网络访问的软件架构数据集和基准的存储库。该规划项目开发了一个概念验证解决方案，证明了拟议仪器的可行性以及该仪器所支持的研究活动。 SAIN 通过不断集成不同的工具，为软件架构研究和实践提供了一个有效的、社区范围的平台。它支持架构在广泛的软件工程活动中的核心作用。该框架包括第一个托管大量恢复架构的存储库，使研究人员能够有效评估他们的技术，旨在重振软件架构的实证研究。