Domain-spanning Maintainability Estimation of Information and Manufacturing Automation Systems

信息系统和制造自动化系统在进化方面面临着非常相似的挑战。两者都在不断变化的需求和随着时间增长的体系结构中挣扎。通常情况下，信息系统和制造自动化系统已经运行了几十年，同时它们也在不断地被修改。修改可包括系统对环境（如硬件或软件平台、技术以及用户属性）和需求变化的修正、改进或适应。因此，可维护性是一个重要的质量方面，特别是对于长寿命的系统。因此，研究提高可维护性的方法具有科学意义，例如在DFG优先级程序设计未来-管理软件进化（spp1593）中。然而，如果没有明确使用案例研究，可维护性改进行动的效果就不能得到科学的经验验证。spp1593涉及两个案例研究，即CoCoME和PPU。本建议旨在支持spp1593案例研究的发展，并利用这些案例研究为spp1593项目提供服务。这种支持以科学工作方案的形式提供，该方案与两个案例研究相结合。建议项目的目标是探索和发展一种方法，通过从架构描述中导出维护任务列表（即要执行的具体更改）来分析软件密集型系统的可维护性。为了评估系统架构，任务列表被应用于对建议的系统设计的可维护性进行评估，这具有很高的实际重要性。使用任务列表，可以比较多个体系结构备选方案，并由此确定变更工作。在与spp1593背景下的研究人员的访谈中，我们首先分析了需求并指定了可维护性场景，并在此基础上准备了CoCoME和PPU的演进场景。我们提出元模型来反映特定领域的结构。此外，由于信息系统和制造自动化系统是变量丰富的，我们研究了如何将系统可变性模型用于可维护性评估。在元模型的基础上，通过识别信息系统和制造自动化系统的变更努力，提出了一种新的可维护性评估过程。该过程考虑了过程和系统之间的相互关系，以及它们对系统所有生命阶段的可维护性评估的影响。

Information systems and manufacturing automation systems face very similar challenges with respect to evolution. Both struggle with changing requirements and architectures that have grown over time. Frequently, information systems as well as manufacturing automation systems are in operation over decades while they are continuously modified. Modifications may include corrections, improvements, or adaptations of the system to changes in its environment (e.g., hardware or software platform, technology, as well as user properties) and in requirements. Thus, maintainability is an important quality aspect, especially for long-living systems. Accordingly, research in methods to improve maintainability are of scientific interest, e.g. in the DFG Priority Program Design for Future -- Managed Software Evolution (SPP 1593). However, the effect of maintainability improving actions cannot be scientifically empirically validated without the explicit use of case studies. There are two case studies involved in SPP 1593, namely CoCoME and PPU. This proposal has been set up to support the evolution of the case studies in the context of SPP 1593 and to provide service to SPP 1593 projects using these case studies. This support is given in form of a scientific work programme that is superimposed with both case studies. The proposed project targets at the exploration and development of a method to analyse maintainability of software-intensive systems by deriving maintenance task lists, i.e. specific changes to be performed, from architecture descriptions. For assessing a systems architecture, the task list is applied to make estimations about the maintainability of the proposed system design that are of high practical importance. Using the task lists, multiple architecture alternatives can be compared and, by that, change efforts can be identified. In interviews with researchers of the context of SPP 1593, we first analyse requirements and specify maintainability scenarios based on which we prepare evolution scenarios of CoCoME and PPU. We propose meta-models to reflect domain-specific constructs. Moreover, as information systems and manufacturing automation systems are variant-rich, we investigate how models of a systems variability can be used for maintainability estimation. Based on the meta-models, we come up with a novel procedure to maintainability estimation by identifying change efforts for information systems and manufacturing automation systems. The procedure considers the interrelations between processes and the system as well as their effects on maintainability estimation while spanning over all life-phases of the system.