SHF: Small: Collaborative Research: Evidence-based Reliability Assessment of Software Product Lines

这项提案将使用2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)提供的资金授予，并符合2009年3月20日题为《确保负责任地使用复苏法案资金》的白宫备忘录第2节规定的要求。作为认知计划官员，我还确认，该提案不支持恢复法案A分部1604节中描述的项目。这种合作研究将创造出提高软件产品线可靠性的技术。软件产品线是一系列软件系统，它们共享某些公共功能，并根据一组指定的变体而不同。软件产品线在工业中的使用迅速增长，因为这种重用降低了构建新系统的成本。可靠性对产品线开发人员很重要，因为许多产品线，如移动电话、工业机器人和外科成像系统，都需要可靠的操作。该项目致力于开发一个严格的软件产品线可靠性增量评估和预测框架(SPL-iRAP)。这项研究有三个主要目的：(1)开发软件产品线的可靠性建模技术，以处理变化和持续变化的影响；(2)基于经验数据，研究可靠性模型在整个产品线预测中的使用；(3)量化重用对软件质量的好处。研究人员将对学生，特别是女性和代表性不足的群体进行软件可靠性技术方面的培训，创建新的教学课程单元，并与产品线的工业开发商合作演示新技术。

This proposal will be awarded using funds made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5), and meets the requirements established in Section 2 of the White House Memorandum entitled, Ensuring Responsible Spending of Recovery Act Funds, dated March 20, 2009. I also affirm, as the cognizant Program Officer, that the proposal does not support projects described in Section 1604 of Division A of the Recovery Act.This collaborative research will create techniques that improve the reliability of software product lines. A software product line is a family of software systems that share certain common features and differ according to a set of specified variations. Use of software product lines has grown rapidly in industry because such reuse reduces the cost of building new systems. Reliability is important to product-line developers since many product lines, such as mobile phones, industrial robots, and surgical imaging systems, require reliable operation. This project focuses on development of a rigorous framework for incremental assessment and prediction of software product line reliability (SPL-iRAP). The research has three major thrusts: (1) developing reliability modeling techniques for software product lines to handle the effects of variations and ongoing changes, (2) investigating the use of reliability models for prediction across the product line based on empirical data, and (3) quantifying the benefit of the reuse on software quality. The researchers will train students, particularly women and underrepresented groups, in software reliability techniques, create new curriculum units for teaching, and partner with industrial developers of product lines to demonstrate the new techniques.