COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: EAGER: Towards Building a CyberInfrastructure for Facilitating the Assessment, Dissemination, Discovery, & Reuse of Software and Data Products

在过去的几年里，通过各种NSF计划资助的项目，如持续科学创新的网络基础设施（CSSI），数据基础设施构建块（DIBBs）和持续创新的软件基础设施（SI2）计划，已经产生了具有广泛社会影响的创新软件和数据产品。收集关于这些产品对其预期用户群体的短期和长期影响的可量化指标的信息，对于未来的供资决定可能很重要，因此符合国家利益。然而，由于NSF资助的产品、使用环境和目标受众的多样性，收集这些信息可能是一项具有挑战性的任务。此外，当一个产品由其他产品组成（或与其他产品集成）时，可能很难捕获所有嵌入式产品的来源跟踪，这会影响收集评估其成功所需指标的过程。此外，对产品中使用的整个技术栈的了解可以使该产品的其他开发人员或采用者能够分析代码重用和集成成本。在分析集成软件产品、与软件产品进行互操作或扩展软件产品的可行性时，检查其许可证和软件堆栈的兼容性也很重要，这样就可以确定产品是否可以合法和无缝地进行互操作，以及衍生产品是否可以按预期进行传播。仔细审查和了解基础产品的许可证对任何衍生产品的影响，或者检查一个产品是否可以与另一个产品共存或互操作，可能会非常耗时。因此，拥有一个中央和公共可访问的基础设施，用于（1）跟踪NSF资助产品的指标，（2）检查其许可证和软件堆栈兼容性，以及（3）发现软件堆栈及其演变，可以用于量化NSF资助产品的社会影响并促进其传播。该项目的总体目标是开发一个软件基础设施，以促进对可公开访问的软件和数据产品的评估、发现、传播和再利用。作为实现这一目标的第一步，该项目已启动原型研究和开发活动：（1）iTracker：用于跟踪在不同平台计算环境上发布和部署的产品的用户定义指标的软件基础设施&，（2）Companion：许可证和软件栈兼容性检查器，用于向用户建议与现有产品集成或互操作的可行性，以及（3）发现目录：NSF资助的产品目录的原型，其可以显示由iTracker针对每个感兴趣的产品捕获的最新信息，并且将Compactory作为特征进行集成。该项目演示了使用区块链安全地存储与编目产品相关的元数据的不可变副本，而这些元数据反过来又可以用于跟踪产品在其生命周期中的演变。该项目展示了确定和促进评估不同类别产品的相关指标所需的基础设施。该项目有可能鼓励开发人员社区采用最佳实践进行产品传播，并可能促进跨学科的合作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。

Over the last several years, the projects funded through the various NSF programs, such as the Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI), Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs), and Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) programs, have resulted in innovative software and data products with broad societal impacts. Collecting the information on the short-term and long-term impact of these products on their intended user communities in terms of quantifiable metrics can be important for future funding decisions, and hence is in national interest. However, collecting such information can be a challenging task given the diversity of the NSF-funded products, their usage environments, and their target audiences. Additionally, when a product is composed of (or integrated with) other products, it can be difficult to capture the provenance trail of all the embedded products, which impacts the process of gathering the metrics necessary in evaluating their success. Moreover, the knowledge of the entire technology stack used in a product can enable other developers or adopters of that product in analyzing the code reuse and integration cost. When analyzing the feasibility of integrating software products, or interoperating with them, or extending them, it is also important to check the compatibility of their licenses and software stacks so that one can determine if the products can interoperate legally and seamlessly, and if the derived products can be disseminated as intended. It can be time-consuming to carefully review and understand the impact of the licenses of the base products on any derived product, or to check if one product can co-exist or interoperate with another product. Hence, having a central and a publicly accessible infrastructure for (1) tracking the metrics of the NSF-funded products, (2) checking their license and software stack compatibility, and (3) discovering the software stack and its evolution, can be useful for quantifying the societal impacts of the NSF-funded products and in promoting their dissemination. The overarching goal of this project is to develop a software infrastructure for facilitating the assessment, discovery, dissemination, and reuse of publicly accessible software and data products. As a preliminary step towards meeting this goal, this project has initiated research and development activities for prototyping: (1) iTracker: the software infrastructure for tracking the user-defined metrics of products released and deployed on different platforms & computing environments, (2) CompChecker: a license and software-stack compatibility checker for advising the users on the feasibility of integrating or interoperating with existing products, and (3) Discovery Catalog: a prototype of a catalog of NSF-funded products which can display the most recent information captured by iTracker for each product of interest and integrate CompChecker as a feature. The project demonstrates the use of block-chain for securely storing an immutable copy of the metadata related to the cataloged products and this metadata can in turn be useful for tracking the evolution of the products during their life cycle. The project demonstrates the infrastructure required for identifying and promoting the relevant metrics for evaluating different categories of products. The project has the potential of encouraging the developer community to adopt best practices for product dissemination and will likely foster cross-disciplinary collaborations.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.