Evoluntionary concern-based extensions: A flexible and modular approach for the design, composition and customization of high-integrity architectural application frameworks

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A perennial problem in designing and implementing information systems is enabling them to cope with the evolution of the business that they support. This problem has become even more severe as organizations need to respond to rapidly changing market conditions in critical areas such as e-commerce. Many different approaches such as object-oriented frameworks and product line architectures have been proposed as paradigms in which to create and extend software systems including those designed for the Web. While these architectural families are generic, the extensions supported by these and other approaches can be based on many different composition mechanisms such as object-oriented views, higher-order polymorphism, connectors, aspects and subjects, which lead to different module notions, and the relationship among these evolutionary approaches is currently not well understood.  Further, the component-based extensions are not governed by enforceable contracts and there is also a lack of quality assurance methods to help eliminate evolutionary concern interactions that are not desirable. The general goal of this research project is to define and evaluate a new flexible and modular approach to software composition and evolution and its supporting methods, theories and tools for the design, composition and customization of high-integrity architectural (Web-based) frameworks or application families based on extended architectural models, evolutionary concern and process-based extensions and coordination contracts. By capturing evolution knowledge about processes and concerns at specification and design times, such an approach could prevent or at least minimize having to re-live in the future a legacy software crisis that could reduce the competitiveness of Canadian companies who rely on software to support their businesses. In general, the proposed approach can help push forward the drive to improve productivity, system quality and cost-effectiveness, and reduce maintenance overheads, impact on customizations or extensions, and time to market, the establishment of a truly competitive market place of contract-based software components, and the support for dependable software evolution.