Model-Driven Engineering of Integrated Digital Infrastructures

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The proposed research program aims to make contributions to the theory and practice of developing complex ecosystems of software components to support teams of individuals engaged in knowledge-based work. All knowledge-based work today across disciplines involves working with software, using sensors and digital instruments, developing software simulations, and cross-referencing and analyzing different types of digital materials to extract information for complex problem-solving and decision-making tasks. Software-engineering research offers three major technical and methodological solutions to this challenge: (a) service orientation and virtualization for building complex systems as scalable evolving aggregations of software components; (b) model-driven engineering (MDE) for systematic software construction through model-transformation chains; and (c) tools and processes for effective distributed teamwork. Recognizing a great opportunity in this alignment of knowledge-workers’ needs and software-engineering competencies, I have planned a research program that aims to support interdisciplinary teams of knowledge workers through model-driven engineering of integrated digital infrastructures. I use the term “integrated digital infrastructures” to mean an evolving ecosystem of independently developed software components and smart devices, flexibly coordinated to support complex activities of expert teams. Adopting a core MDE methodology, the proposed program will answer basic research questions on how to support evolution and maintenance of MDE software, so that manual post-generation code refinements may be propagated back to the relevant models in the code-construction chain. Next, we will apply (and stress test) the MDE methodology by integrating it with different types of models that embody domain-specific semantics in order to develop (a) a high-level programming model for software systems integrating sensors and smart devices, and (b) a new breed of socially aware, RDF-mediated asset repositories. The underlying hypothesis is that model-transformation processes should rely on the domain-specific semantics of the manipulated models, to support the alignment of the constructed software with its requirements. Aiming at systematizing the users’ interaction with the underlying system, we plan to develop a general monitoring and coordination service, informed by the underlying data models and integrated with personalizable applications, to enable users to interact with the infrastructure and each other, any time through any device. Finally, the usage record of the infrastructure, as captured by the monitoring service, will be analyzed to gain insights on the data, the team practices and their evolution. The potential impact of these activities is substantial. (1) Improving our ability to maintain model-driven constructed software in sync with its underlying models and transformation rules, even as it evolves with new requirements, is essential for the adoption of this methodology, which promises improvements in code quality and increased productivity. (2) Equally importantly, systematizing the construction and improving the utility and usability of digital infrastructures promises to substantially improve the productivity of knowledge-worker teams, and advance our digital-economy agenda. (3) Finally, the choice of the Smart-CondoTM project as the testbed for the empirical real-world validation of the results of the proposed activities was motivated by the desire to put software in the service of patients and the clinicians who care for them and to develop a comprehensive platform for patient-centric healthcare.