CAREER: Toward a Scientific Basis for the design of Integrated Systems

这个职业项目的广泛目标是帮助巩固软件工程作为一门学科的地位，该学科使用基于可概括的科学知识的模型、方法和机制。该项目的研究部分解决了软件设计中的三个重要问题。中介器方法是一种设计方法，其中集成独立行为所需的行为关系被单独标识并表示为表示这些行为的对象外部的对象。将关系外部化为中介者又依赖于对显式和隐式调用机制的谨慎应用。第一个研究重点是试图改善软件设计的科学基础，科学地检验这样一种说法，即设计集成系统的常见方法在集成需求的演化方面比中介方法差。第二是通过试点项目探索使用中介器方法来辅助分布式系统的设计。第三是研究一种新的方法，以帮助设计人员在软件设计的发展过程中平衡多个目标。一种环境，它通过描绘设计与几个模型中每个模型的差异来反映设计满足几个目标的程度，其中每个模型都由设计者定义为相对于一个特定目标是好的。教学重点是培养了解软件设计是一项多目标的、有风险的活动，在信息不完整的情况下完成的工程师，因此需要创造力和反思的、严格的、降低风险的方法。为了帮助学生了解如何管理真实软件系统的复杂性和风险，课程重点关注现实的开发项目，如移动机器人系统。

The broad objective of this CAREER project is to help cement the status of software engineering as a discipline that uses models, methods, and mechanisms based on generalizable scientific knowledge. The research component of this project addresses three important problems in software design. The mediator method is an approach to design in which the behavioral relationships needed to integrate independent behaviors are separately identified and represented as objects external to the objects representing those behaviors. Externalizing relationships as mediators depends in turn on a careful application of both explicit and implicit invocation mechanisms. The first research focus is an attempt to improve scientific foundations for software design, scientifically testing the claim that common methods for designing integrated systems are poorer than the mediator method with respect to ease of evolution of integration requirements. Second is the exploration, through pilot projects, of using the mediator method to aid the design of distributed systems. Third is the investigation of a new approach to helping designers balance multiple objectives as software designs evolve. An environment that reflects how well a design meets each of several objectives by depicting divergences of the design from each of several a models, where each model is defined by the designer as good with respect to one particular objective. The teaching focus is intended to develop engineers who understand software design to be a multi-objective, risky activity, done with incomplete information and thus demanding creativity and reflective, rigorous, risk-reducing methods. To help students understand how to manage the complexity and risk of real software systems, courses focus on realistic development projects, such as a mobile robot system.