Model-driven engineering for distributed, reliable, adaptive, web-based software

预期的未来经济、工业和社会创新对软件及其基础开发过程提出了重大挑战。例如，许多设想中的物联网或智能基础设施应用所需的软件必须将联合收割机的几个特征结合到前所未有的程度，包括规模、分布、异构性、灵活性、可演化性、可靠性、安全性和保密性。据专家称，目前的软件工程技术和工具不足以有效和高效地构建这种复杂程度的软件。拟议的研究将解决这个问题，特别关注分布式软件具有高鲁棒性，可靠性和适应性的要求。健壮性和可靠性是大多数软件所要求的基本质量属性。自适应扩展了先前阐述的自主计算愿景，并促进了，例如，在不断变化或未知的操作条件或使用模式下使用软件。 这项工作将结合联合收割机的最先进的分布式系统的概念，符号，技术和工具，促进抽象和自动化领域，包括模型驱动工程（MDE），软件体系结构和领域特定的语言，所有这些都有被证明的潜力，以帮助控制复杂性，并允许高效，有效地开发复杂的，高质量的软件。这项工作还将利用演员模型的最新应用和扩展。尽管简单，这种组织并发和分布式系统的架构风格最近已经非常成功地用于一系列大规模的工业分布式应用程序，包括大容量电信系统和在线游戏，如微软Xbox上的Halo。因此，演员似乎是为我们的工作提供适当基础的理想人选。由于许多未来的分布式系统将是基于Web的，研究也将建立在国家的最先进的Web技术，并扩展它更好地支持大规模的，健壮的，可靠的分布式软件的设计。 总之，拟议的研究以一种新颖的方式解决了一个重要的，及时的问题。它借鉴了计算机科学各个领域的成果，将推动分布式和自适应软件开发的最新发展，同时也是强大和可靠的。它将帮助加拿大工业实现物联网（IoT）的创新潜力，帮助他们构建许多设想的物联网应用程序背后的软件。它将为使用当前的Web技术和JavaScript生态系统提供急需的支持，以设计和构建可靠的大规模系统。此外，它将为广泛的学生（3名博士，8名硕士和5名理学士）提供培训，并为他们提供成为抢手的毕业生所需的知识和技能，并为加拿大工业和学术界做出宝贵的贡献。

Expected future economic, industrial and societal innovations place significant challenges on software and its underlying development processes. For instance, the software required for many of the envisioned Internet of Things or smart infrastructure applications will have to combine several characteristics to an unprecedented degree, including scale, distribution, heterogeneity, flexibility, evolvability, reliability, safety, and security. According to experts, current software engineering techniques and tools are insufficient to build software of this level of complexity effectively and efficiently. The proposed research will address this problem with a particular focus on distributed software with high robustness, reliability, and adaptation requirements. Robustness and reliability are basic quality attributes required by most software. Adaptation extends previously articulated visions of autonomic computing and facilitates, e.g., the use of software under changing or unknown operating conditions or usage patterns. The work will combine the state-of-the-art in distributed systems with concepts, notations, techniques and tools from fields that promote abstraction and automation including model-driven engineering (MDE), software architecture, and domain-specific languages, all of which have the proven potential to help control complexity and allow for the efficient, effective development of complex, high-quality software. The work will also leverage recent applications and extensions of the actor model. Despite its simplicity, this architectural style of organizing concurrent and distributed systems has recently seen very successful use for a range of large-scale, industrial distributed applications, including high-volume telecom systems and online games such as Halo on Microsoft's Xbox. Actors thus appear to be an ideal candidate to provide a suitable foundation to our work. Since many future distributed systems will be web-based, the research will also build on the state-of-the-art in web technology and extend it with better support for the design of large-scale, robust, and reliable distributed software. In sum, the proposed research addresses an important, timely problem in a novel way. Drawing on results from a range of fields in computer science, it will advance the state-of-the-art in the development of software that is distributed and adaptive, yet also robust and reliable. It will help Canadian industry realize the innovation potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) by helping them build the software behind many envisioned IoT applications. It will provide much needed support for the use of current web technology and the JavaScript ecosystem to design and build reliable large-scale systems. Moreover, it will provide training for a broad range of students (3 PhD, 8 MSc, and 5 BSc) and give them the knowledge and skills they need to become sought-after graduates and make valuable contributions to Canadian industry and academia.