COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: EAGER: Towards Building a CyberInfrastructure for Facilitating the Assessment, Dissemination, Discovery, & Reuse of Software and Data Products

合作研究：渴望：建立网络基础设施以促进评估、传播、发现、

• 批准号: 2314202
• 负责人: Ritu Arora
• 金额: $ 17.5万
• 依托单位: Wayne State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-01-01 至 2023-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2314202&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: COLLABORATIVE; RESEARCH; EAGER; Towards; Building

Over the last several years, the projects funded through the various NSF programs, such as the Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI), Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs), and Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) programs, have resulted in innovative software and data products with broad societal impacts. Collecting the information on the short-term and long-term impact of these products on their intended user communities in terms of quantifiable metrics can be important for future funding decisions, and hence is in national interest. However, collecting such information can be a challenging task given the diversity of the NSF-funded products, their usage environments, and their target audiences. Additionally, when a product is composed of (or integrated with) other products, it can be difficult to capture the provenance trail of all the embedded products, which impacts the process of gathering the metrics necessary in evaluating their success. Moreover, the knowledge of the entire technology stack used in a product can enable other developers or adopters of that product in analyzing the code reuse and integration cost. When analyzing the feasibility of integrating software products, or interoperating with them, or extending them, it is also important to check the compatibility of their licenses and software stacks so that one can determine if the products can interoperate legally and seamlessly, and if the derived products can be disseminated as intended. It can be time-consuming to carefully review and understand the impact of the licenses of the base products on any derived product, or to check if one product can co-exist or interoperate with another product. Hence, having a central and a publicly accessible infrastructure for (1) tracking the metrics of the NSF-funded products, (2) checking their license and software stack compatibility, and (3) discovering the software stack and its evolution, can be useful for quantifying the societal impacts of the NSF-funded products and in promoting their dissemination. The overarching goal of this project is to develop a software infrastructure for facilitating the assessment, discovery, dissemination, and reuse of publicly accessible software and data products. As a preliminary step towards meeting this goal, this project has initiated research and development activities for prototyping: (1) iTracker: the software infrastructure for tracking the user-defined metrics of products released and deployed on different platforms & computing environments, (2) CompChecker: a license and software-stack compatibility checker for advising the users on the feasibility of integrating or interoperating with existing products, and (3) Discovery Catalog: a prototype of a catalog of NSF-funded products which can display the most recent information captured by iTracker for each product of interest and integrate CompChecker as a feature. The project demonstrates the use of block-chain for securely storing an immutable copy of the metadata related to the cataloged products and this metadata can in turn be useful for tracking the evolution of the products during their life cycle. The project demonstrates the infrastructure required for identifying and promoting the relevant metrics for evaluating different categories of products. The project has the potential of encouraging the developer community to adopt best practices for product dissemination and will likely foster cross-disciplinary collaborations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在过去的几年中，通过各种NSF计划资助的项目，例如持续的科学创新（CSSI）（CSSI），数据基础架构构建块（DIBBS）（DIBBS）以及持续创新计划（SI2）计划的软件基础架构（SI2）计划，具有广泛社会影响的创新软件和数据产生。从可量化指标方面，收集有关这些产品对其预期用户社区的短期和长期影响的信息对于将来的资助决策很重要，因此符合国家利益。但是，鉴于NSF资助的产品，其使用环境及其目标受众的多样性，收集此类信息可能是一项具有挑战性的任务。此外，当产品由（或与其他产品集成）组成时，可能很难捕获所有嵌入式产品的出处，这会影响收集评估其成功所必需的指标的过程。此外，对产品中使用的整个技术堆栈的了解可以使该产品的其他开发人员或采用者在分析代码重用和集成成本时。在分析集成软件产品的可行性或与它们互操作或扩展它们的可行性时，检查其许可证和软件堆栈的兼容性也很重要，以便可以确定产品是否可以在法律上和无缝地进行互动，以及是否可以按预期进行派生产品。仔细审查和了解基本产品对任何派生产品的许可的影响，或检查一种产品是否可以与其他产品共存或互操作可能是很耗时的。因此，具有（1）跟踪NSF资助产品的指标的中央和公共访问的基础架构，（2）检查其许可证和软件堆栈兼容性，以及（3）发现软件堆栈及其进化，可用于量化NSF资助的产品的社会影响，以促进他们的异性销量。该项目的总体目标是开发软件基础架构，以促进评估，发现，传播和重复使用公开访问的软件和数据产品。 As a preliminary step towards meeting this goal, this project has initiated research and development activities for prototyping: (1) iTracker: the software infrastructure for tracking the user-defined metrics of products released and deployed on different platforms & computing environments, (2) CompChecker: a license and software-stack compatibility checker for advising the users on the feasibility of integrating or interoperating with existing products, and (3) Discovery目录：NSF资助产品目录的原型，可以显示Itracker捕获的每种感兴趣产品的最新信息，并将Compchecker集成为功能。该项目证明了使用链链安全地存储与分类产品有关的元数据的不变副本，而该元数据又对在其生命周期中跟踪产品的演变很有用。该项目展示了识别和促进相关指标所需的基础架构，以评估不同类别的产品。该项目有可能鼓励开发人员社区采用最佳实践来进行产品传播，并可能促进跨学科合作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响来评估的评估值得支持的。