Software design through model transformation

尽管软件工程的研究已经取得了很大的进展，但是设计高质量的软件系统和提高生产力仍然面临着巨大的挑战。这是由于软件开发过程的复杂性，需要在分析领域和软件开发领域的广泛知识。我们确定了两种正交的方法来尝试管理这种复杂性。第一种方法将开发过程视为一系列转换，这些转换从软件的规范开始，以软件的实现结束，而第二种方法由识别重复出现的问题的解决方案组成。我们的研究计划结合了这两种方法，特别是在设计步骤中。实际上，我们的目标是开发技术和工具，以支持软件设计者在转换模型驱动方法的框架内从分析过渡到设计。特别地，我们感兴趣的是探索支持两个关键设计活动的转换，即架构设计和详细设计。我们将这些设计活动视为通过应用编码的设计工件（如设计模式和架构风格）来转换输入模型的过程。因此，在这个研究计划中，我们建议构建并实现一些方法，这些方法将有助于推断应用这些设计工件的上下文，并支持它们在模型转换框架中的应用。

Although much progress has been accomplished by software engineering research, designing high quality software systems and increasing productivity still pose great challenges. This results from the complexity of the software development process which requires extensive knowledge both in the domain under analysis and in software development. We identify two orthogonal approaches that attempt to manage this complexity. The first views the development process as a sequence of transformations that start with a specification of the software and end with its implementation while the second consists of identifying solutions to recurring problems. Our research program combines these two approaches, in particular in the design step. Indeed we aim to develop techniques and tools that support software designers in the transition from analysis to design within the framework of a transformational model-driven approach. In particular, we are interested in exploring transformations that support two key design activities namely architectural design and detailed design. We view these design activities as the process of transforming input models by applying codified design artifacts such as design patterns and architectural styles. Hence, within this research program, we propose to build and implement approaches that will help in inferring the context for applying these design artifacts and support their application within a model transformation framework.