CAREER: Toward a Scientific Basis for the design of Integrated Systems

这个CAREER项目的广泛目标是帮助巩固软件工程作为一门学科的地位，该学科使用基于可推广的科学知识的模型、方法和机制。这个项目的研究部分解决了软件设计中的三个重要问题。中介方法是一种设计方法，在这种方法中，集成独立行为所需的行为关系被单独识别并表示为代表这些行为的对象之外的对象。将关系外部化为中介又取决于对显式和隐式调用机制的谨慎应用。第一个研究重点是试图改善软件设计的科学基础，科学地测试设计集成系统的通用方法在集成需求的演化方面比中介方法差的说法。第二是通过试点项目，探索使用中介方法来辅助分布式系统的设计。第三是研究一种新方法，帮助设计师在软件设计发展的过程中平衡多个目标。一种环境，通过描述设计与多个a模型之间的差异来反映设计如何很好地满足多个目标中的每个目标，其中每个模型都由设计师定义为与一个特定目标相关的良好模型。教学重点旨在培养工程师，使他们理解软件设计是一项多目标、有风险的活动，是在信息不完整的情况下完成的，因此需要创造力和反思、严谨、降低风险的方法。为了帮助学生了解如何管理实际软件系统的复杂性和风险，课程侧重于实际的开发项目，例如移动机器人系统。

The broad objective of this CAREER project is to help cement the status of software engineering as a discipline that uses models, methods, and mechanisms based on generalizable scientific knowledge. The research component of this project addresses three important problems in software design. The mediator method is an approach to design in which the behavioral relationships needed to integrate independent behaviors are separately identified and represented as objects external to the objects representing those behaviors. Externalizing relationships as mediators depends in turn on a careful application of both explicit and implicit invocation mechanisms. The first research focus is an attempt to improve scientific foundations for software design, scientifically testing the claim that common methods for designing integrated systems are poorer than the mediator method with respect to ease of evolution of integration requirements. Second is the exploration, through pilot projects, of using the mediator method to aid the design of distributed systems. Third is the investigation of a new approach to helping designers balance multiple objectives as software designs evolve. An environment that reflects how well a design meets each of several objectives by depicting divergences of the design from each of several a models, where each model is defined by the designer as good with respect to one particular objective. The teaching focus is intended to develop engineers who understand software design to be a multi-objective, risky activity, done with incomplete information and thus demanding creativity and reflective, rigorous, risk-reducing methods. To help students understand how to manage the complexity and risk of real software systems, courses focus on realistic development projects, such as a mobile robot system.