Checkable Representations of Design Decisions

设计决策的可检查表示

• 批准号: RGPIN-2017-03981
• 负责人: Robillard, Martin
• 金额: $ 2.48万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2019-01-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=685191
• 关键词: Checkable; Representations; Design; Decisions

Design is a significant activity of the software development life cycle whose output is a set of decisions on how to structure a system, along with rationale for these decisions. In practice, the information that constitutes a design can become progressively lost, or invalidated from repeated changes that introduce gradual inconsistencies between a design document and the code. When design information is lost or becomes invalid, future changes to a system become increasingly effort-intensive and error-prone, two factors that contribute to poor software quality. Software quality problems make headline news on a weekly basis and can severely impact public safety and quality of life in Canada and elsewhere.******To mitigate the problem of design erosion in software systems, we propose to investigate new techniques for discovering, representing, and communicating low-level software design information. The goal of the research is to elaborate an approach that supports the efficient creation and use of checkable representations of design decisions in software development.******The proposed research will involve three complementary facets: design decision recovery, design decision representation, and effective communication of design decisions. For the design recovery facet, we will consider a knowledge-based approach that integrates features derived from both static analysis and text mining. As part of the representation facet, we will seek to develop a representation system that adequately balances expressiveness, usability, and checkability for design decisions. The communication facet will target the problem of effectively communicating both existing decisions and violations of specified design decisions.******An effective system for describing low-level design decisions in a checkable way has the potential to positively impact programming and other software development practices, lead to higher software quality, and improve software development efficiency. A programming system that explicitly supports asserting design decisions may also impact computing education by stimulating novice programmers to consciously consider design alternatives when implementing solutions.

设计是软件开发生命周期中的一项重要活动，其输出是一组关于如何构建系统的决策，沿着这些决策的基本原理。在实践中，构成设计的信息可能会逐渐丢失，或者由于重复的更改而无效，这些更改会导致设计文档和代码之间逐渐不一致。当设计信息丢失或变得无效时，对系统的未来更改将变得越来越费力和容易出错，这是导致软件质量差的两个因素。软件质量问题每周都会成为头条新闻，并可能严重影响加拿大和其他地方的公共安全和生活质量。为了减轻软件系统中的设计侵蚀的问题，我们建议调查新的技术，发现，代表和沟通低层次的软件设计信息。该研究的目标是制定一种方法，支持在软件开发中有效创建和使用设计决策的可检查表示。建议的研究将涉及三个互补的方面：设计决策恢复，设计决策表示，和有效的沟通设计决策。对于设计恢复方面，我们将考虑一种基于知识的方法，该方法集成了来自静态分析和文本挖掘的功能。作为表示方面的一部分，我们将寻求开发一个表示系统，充分平衡设计决策的表达性、可用性和可检查性。沟通方面将针对有效沟通现有决策和违反指定设计决策的问题。一个以可检查的方式描述底层设计决策的有效系统有可能对编程和其他软件开发实践产生积极影响，从而提高软件质量，并提高软件开发效率。一个明确支持断言设计决策的编程系统也可能通过刺激新手程序员在实现解决方案时有意识地考虑设计方案来影响计算教育。