Concern-Driven Software Development

随着模型驱动工程(Model-Driven Engineering，MDE)的出现，软件开发被视为一个模型生产、提炼和集成的过程。模型是在软件开发生命周期的不同点或不同阶段为不同的目的使用最合适的建模形式主义(S)在手头任务的最合适的抽象级别(S)构建的，并定义了在这些模型之间建立关系的模型转换。实践证明，MDE可以显著降低软件开发成本。MDE在实践中没有被广泛使用的主要原因之一是缺乏模型重用。通常，正在开发的系统的模型是从头开始创建的，而不是重用已有的模型。这使得建模往往比编码更麻烦，因为现在大多数编程语言都提供了大量的库或框架来促进代码重用。本研究计划提出关注驱动的软件开发(CCD)作为支持大规模模型重用的下一代MDE。传统的MDE集中在模型上，而在CCD中关注的主要元素是关注点，它包含了一组与软件工程师感兴趣的领域相关的不同抽象级别的模型。关注点可以具有功能性的、非功能性的、甚至是有意的特征(例如，安全性)，或者与特定的解决方案有关(例如，通信协议、设计模式)。CCD建立在面向方面、软件产品线工程和重用社区的技术基础上，以一种可以在特定于应用程序的模型中轻松重用的方式打包一组关注的模型。通过允许软件工程师成为关注点专家，并通过允许创建可重用的关注点模型库，CCD具有改变软件工程学科的潜力。这将极大地减少在实践中应用MDE所需的建模工作，并因此使MDE成为任何开发软件的公司的可行开发选择，即使在快速发展的软件开发项目的背景下也是如此。

With Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), software development is seen as a process of model production, refinement and integration. Models are built at different points or during different phases of the software development life cycle for different purposes using the most appropriate modelling formalism(s) at the most appropriate level(s) of abstraction for the task at hand, and model transformations are defined that establish relationships among these models. It has been shown that MDE can significantly lower the costs of software development. One of the main reasons why MDE is not widely used in practice is the lack of model reuse. Typically, models for a system under development are created from scratch, rather than reusing already existing models. This makes modelling often more cumbersome than coding, since most programming languages nowadays offer extensive libraries or frameworks facilitating code reuse.This research program proposes concern-driven software development (CCD) as the next generation MDE enabling large scale model reuse. Whereas classic MDE concentrates on models, the main element of focus in CCD is the concern, which encompasses a set of models at different levels of abstraction pertaining to a domain of interest to a software engineer. Concerns can have functional, non-functional, or even intentional characteristics (e.g., security), or pertain to specific solutions (e.g., communication protocols, design patterns). CCD builds on technology from the aspect-orientation, software product line engineering and reuse communities to package a set of models of a concern in such a way that they can easily be reused in an application-specific model. CCD has the potential to transform the software engineering discipline by allowing software engineers to become concern specialists and by enabling the creation of reusable concern model libraries. This will drastically reduce the modelling effort required to apply MDE in practice, and as a result make MDE a viable development choice for any company developing software, even in the context of rapidly evolving software development projects.