CRI: CI-NEW: Collaborative Research: Constructing a Community-Wide Software Architecture Infrastructure

软件系统的生命周期主要由维护成本和工作量决定。软件系统的体系结构被认为是系统属性及其在系统生命周期内成功维护和演化的关键决定因素。然而，在以架构为中心的软件维护领域，经验研究和从学术界到实践的技术转移受到了不相交的环境，冗余工作，与开发强大工具相关的高成本以及缺乏共享研究基础设施和数据集的阻碍。为了应对这些挑战，该项目开发了软件架构INcodile（SAIN），这是第一个用于组装架构相关技术和工具的集成框架，其目标是在软件维护的背景下进行实证研究。SAIN将提供一个工具套件，包括四个主要组成部分：（1）一个用于逆向工程和分析软件系统架构的尖端工具编目库，这增加了可重用性，消除了整个社区的冗余工具开发;（2）一个即插即用工具，用于集成工具和技术，以促进现有解决方案的互操作性，并能够创建新的解决方案;（3）可复制性向导，用于设置实验模板，生成复制包，并以易于运行和修改的格式发布它们，这促进了研究人员和从业者对现有技术的广泛可访问性和顺利使用;以及（4）软件架构数据集和基准的公共存储库，用于支持广泛的软件架构实证研究。 SAIN旨在弥合软件架构领域学术研究与实践之间的差距。一方面，SAIN将通过提供一个大型的架构工件存储库（包括可互操作的工具和基准数据集）来实现广泛的实证研究。因此，研究人员将能够使用相同的数据集比较和对比不同的技术，以确定差距和不准确之处。这将为改进软件架构研究的最新技术提供新的解决方案。另一方面，SAIN将为从业者提供一个权威的来源，提供可互操作的工具和反馈，以及一个贡献尖端架构工件的渠道。总之，SAIN有潜力通过以下方式改变软件架构研究和实践：（1）促进最适合现代问题的尖端技术和工具的发现和采用;（2）确保架构在广泛的软件工程活动中的核心作用。SAIN将可供公众使用，并将促进比今天更有效的大学与行业合作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响力进行评估而被认为值得支持审查标准。

A software system's life cycle is dominated by maintenance costs and efforts. A software system's architecture is acknowledged as a key determinant of the system's properties and its successful maintenance and evolution over the lifetime of a system. However, in the area of architecture-centered software maintenance, empirical research and technology transfer from academia to practice have been impeded by disjoint environments, redundant efforts, high costs associated with developing robust tools, and the lack of shared research infrastructure and datasets. To address these challenges, this project develops the Software Architecture INstrument (SAIN), a first-of-its-kind integration framework for assembling architecture-related techniques and tools with the goal of enabling empirical research in the context of software maintenance. SAIN will deliver a tool suite comprising four principal components: (1) a catalogued library of cutting-edge tools for reverse engineering and analyzing software systems' architectures, which increases reusability and eliminates redundant tool development across the community; (2) a plug-and-play instrument for integrating the tools and techniques to promote interoperability of existing solutions and enable the creation of new solutions; (3) reproducibility wizards to set up experiment-templates, produce replication packages, and release them in easy-to-run and modify formats, which promotes wide accessibility and smooth usage of existing techniques by researchers and practitioners; and (4) a public repository of software-architecture datasets and benchmarks for supporting a broad range of software-architecture empirical studies. SAIN aims to bridge the gap between academic research and practice in the software-architecture domain. On the one hand, SAIN will enable extensive empirical research by providing a large repository of architectural artifacts, including interoperable tools and benchmark datasets. As such, researchers will be able to compare and contrast different techniques using the same datasets to identify gaps and inaccuracies. This will enable new solutions for improving the state-of-the-art in software-architecture research. On the other hand, SAIN will provide practitioners with an authoritative source offering interoperable tools and feedback, as well as a channel to contribute cutting-edge architectural artifacts. In summary, SAIN has the potential to transform software architecture research and practice by (1) facilitating the discovery and adoption of cutting-edge techniques and tools that are best-suited to modern problems and (2) ensuring architecture's central role in a broad range of software-engineering activities. SAIN will be available for public use and will foster much more effective university-industry collaboration than is the case today.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.