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

设计和实施信息系统的一个长期问题是使它们能够应对它们所支持的业务的发展。这一问题变得更加严重，因为组织需要对电子商务等关键领域快速变化的市场状况做出反应。已经提出了许多不同的方法，例如面向对象的框架和产品线体系结构，作为创建和扩展软件系统(包括为Web设计的软件系统)的范例。虽然这些架构族是通用的，但这些方法和其他方法支持的扩展可以基于许多不同的组合机制，如面向对象的视图、高阶多态、连接器、方面和主题，这导致了不同的模块概念，并且这些进化方法之间的关系目前还没有很好地理解。此外，基于组件的扩展不受可强制执行的合同的管理，也缺乏质量保证方法来帮助消除不受欢迎的演化关注点交互。这个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及其支持方法、理论和工具，用于基于扩展的体系结构模型、演化关注点和基于过程的扩展和协调合同来设计、组合和定制高度完整的体系结构(基于Web的)框架或应用程序家族。通过在规范和设计时捕获有关流程和关注点的进化知识，这种方法可以防止或至少最大限度地减少未来不得不重新生活的遗留软件危机，因为这种危机可能会降低依赖软件支持其业务的加拿大公司的竞争力。总的来说，拟议的方法有助于推动提高生产率、系统质量和成本效益的努力，减少维护管理费用、对定制或扩展的影响以及上市时间，为基于合同的软件组件建立一个真正有竞争力的市场，并支持可靠的软件发展。

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.