Evoluntionary concern-based extensions: A flexible and modular approach for the design, composition and customization of high-integrity architectural application frameworks

在设计和实现信息系统时，一个长期存在的问题是使它们能够应对它们所支持的业务的发展。当组织需要对电子商务等关键领域快速变化的市场条件做出反应时，这个问题变得更加严重。许多不同的方法，如面向对象框架和产品线体系结构，已经被提出作为范例来创建和扩展软件系统，包括那些为Web设计的软件系统。虽然这些体系结构家族是通用的，但这些方法和其他方法所支持的扩展可以基于许多不同的组合机制，例如面向对象视图、高阶多态性、连接器、方面和主题，这些机制会导致不同的模块概念，并且这些进化方法之间的关系目前还没有得到很好的理解。此外，基于组件的扩展不受可执行契约的管理，并且还缺乏质量保证方法来帮助消除不理想的进化关注点交互。该研究项目的总体目标是定义和评估一种新的灵活和模块化的软件组合和演化方法，以及它的支持方法、理论和工具，用于设计、组合和定制基于扩展的体系结构模型、演化关注和基于过程的扩展和协调契约的高完整性体系结构（基于web的）框架或应用程序家族。通过在规范和设计阶段获取关于过程和关注点的演进知识，这样的方法可以防止或至少最小化必须在未来重新生活的遗留软件危机，这种危机可能会降低依赖软件来支持其业务的加拿大公司的竞争力。一般来说，所建议的方法可以帮助推动提高生产力、系统质量和成本效益的驱动力，并减少维护开销、对定制或扩展的影响、上市时间、建立基于契约的软件组件的真正竞争市场，以及对可靠软件发展的支持。

A perennial problem in designing and implementing information systems is enabling them to cope with the evolution of the business that they support. This problem has become even more severe as organizations need to respond to rapidly changing market conditions in critical areas such as e-commerce. Many different approaches such as object-oriented frameworks and product line architectures have been proposed as paradigms in which to create and extend software systems including those designed for the Web. While these architectural families are generic, the extensions supported by these and other approaches can be based on many different composition mechanisms such as object-oriented views, higher-order polymorphism, connectors, aspects and subjects, which lead to different module notions, and the relationship among these evolutionary approaches is currently not well understood.  Further, the component-based extensions are not governed by enforceable contracts and there is also a lack of quality assurance methods to help eliminate evolutionary concern interactions that are not desirable. The general goal of this research project is to define and evaluate a new flexible and modular approach to software composition and evolution and its supporting methods, theories and tools for the design, composition and customization of high-integrity architectural (Web-based) frameworks or application families based on extended architectural models, evolutionary concern and process-based extensions and coordination contracts. By capturing evolution knowledge about processes and concerns at specification and design times, such an approach could prevent or at least minimize having to re-live in the future a legacy software crisis that could reduce the competitiveness of Canadian companies who rely on software to support their businesses. In general, the proposed approach can help push forward the drive to improve productivity, system quality and cost-effectiveness, and reduce maintenance overheads, impact on customizations or extensions, and time to market, the establishment of a truly competitive market place of contract-based software components, and the support for dependable software evolution.