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

软件系统的生命周期由维护成本和工作量主导。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中成功维护和发展的关键决定因素。然而，在以体系结构为中心的软件维护领域，由于分散的环境、重复的工作、与开发强大的工具相关的高成本以及缺乏共享的研究基础设施和数据集，实证研究和技术从学术到实践的转移一直受到阻碍。为了应对这些挑战，该项目开发了软件体系结构工具(SAIN)，这是一种首创的集成框架，用于组装与体系结构相关的技术和工具，目的是在软件维护的背景下进行实证研究。SAIN将提供一个由四个主要组成部分组成的工具套件：(1)用于逆向工程和分析软件系统架构的尖端工具库，它增加了可重用性，消除了整个社区中多余的工具开发；(2)用于集成工具和技术的即插即用工具，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)可重复性向导，用于建立实验模板、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获取和顺利使用；以及(4)软件体系结构数据集和基准的公共存储库，用于支持广泛的软件体系结构经验研究。SAIN的目标是弥合软件体系结构领域的学术研究和实践之间的差距。一方面，SAIN将通过提供大量的架构构件(包括可互操作的工具和基准数据集)来支持广泛的实证研究。因此，研究人员将能够使用相同的数据集来比较和对比不同的技术，以确定差距和不准确。这将为改进软件体系结构研究的最先进水平提供新的解决方案。另一方面，SAIN将为从业者提供权威来源，提供可互操作的工具和反馈，以及贡献尖端建筑文物的渠道。总而言之，SAIN具有通过以下方式改变软件体系结构研究和实践的潜力：(1)促进发现和采用最适合现代问题的尖端技术和工具；(2)确保体系结构在广泛的软件工程活动中发挥核心作用。SAIN将可供公众使用，并将促进比目前更有效的大学与行业合作。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.