CAREER: A Mining-Based Approach for Consistent and Timely Adaptation of Component-Based Software

越来越多地，软件被期望动态地适应其行为，以响应计算基础设施以及周围物理环境中不断变化的条件。在软件的动态适配中的两个重要问题是（1）如何防止在适配期间软件的故障，以及（2）如何减少由软件提供的功能的中断。这项研究将设计一种新的技术来处理这些问题，自动确定什么时候是最好的时间进行更改的运行中的软件系统。从这项研究中出现的原则将提供一个新的方法的工程动态自适应软件的基础。研究结果将被纳入教育，以便明天的软件工程师能够更好地应对构建自适应软件的挑战。该方法将通过一套开源工具来实现，为将研究成果转化为行业铺平道路。针对这一研究问题的所有现有技术都假设了详细的软件组件依赖模型的可用性。这项研究将开发一种新的技术，在这种模型不可用、难以构建或由于软件的演变而过时的情况下解决这个问题。指导这项研究的假设是，通过监控软件系统？的执行历史（例如，消息交换，方法调用）足够长的时间，可以挖掘系统组件之间的交互和依赖关系的准确模型。该研究将展示如何以这种方式推断的模型可以用于（1）确保运行软件中的更改不会产生可能危及系统的不一致性？的功能，（2）控制系统中发生的中断水平？的操作，以及（3）自动调整模型，以改变潜在的演变软件组件之间的依赖关系。

Increasingly, software is expected to dynamically adapt its behavior in response to changing conditions in the computation infrastructure as well as the surrounding physical environment. Two important problems in dynamic adaptation of software are (1) how to prevent failure of the software during adaptation, and (2) how to reduce disruptions in the functionalities provisioned by the software. This research will devise a novel technique for dealing with these problems by automatically determining when is the best time for making changes to a running software system. The principles emerging from this research will provide the foundation for a new method of engineering dynamically adaptive software. The results of the research will be incorporated into education, such that tomorrow's software engineers are better equipped to tackle the challenges of constructing adaptive software. The approach will be realized via a suite of open source tools to pave the way for transitioning the research results to the industry. All prior techniques targeted at this research problem have assumed the availability of detailed software component dependency models. This research will develop a novel technique that solves this problem in settings where such models are either not available, difficult to build, or outdated due to the evolution of the software. The hypothesis guiding this research is that by monitoring a software system?s execution history (e.g., message exchanges, method invocations) for a sufficiently long period of time, it is possible to mine an accurate model of interactions and dependencies among the system's components. The research will demonstrate how models inferred in this way can be used to (1) ensure changes in the running software do not create inconsistencies that could jeopardize the system?s functionality, (2) control the level of disruption incurred in system?s operations due to adaptation, and (3) automatically adjust the models to changing dependencies among the potentially evolving software components.