Model-driven engineering for distributed, reliable, adaptive, web-based software

预期的未来经济、工业和社会创新对软件及其基础开发过程提出了重大挑战。例如，许多设想的物联网或智能基础设施应用所需的软件将必须以前所未有的程度结合几个特征，包括规模、分布性、异构性、灵活性、可演化性、可靠性、安全性和安全性。根据专家的说法，目前的软件工程技术和工具不足以有效和高效地构建这种复杂程度的软件。拟议的研究将特别关注具有高健壮性、可靠性和适应性要求的分布式软件来解决这一问题。健壮性和可靠性是大多数软件所要求的基本质量属性。适应扩展了先前阐明的自主计算的愿景，并促进了例如在变化的或未知的操作条件或使用模式下使用软件。这项工作将把分布式系统中最先进的技术与促进抽象和自动化的领域的概念、符号、技术和工具结合起来，包括模型驱动工程(MDE)、软件体系结构和特定于领域的语言，所有这些都被证明具有帮助控制复杂性并允许高效、高效地开发复杂、高质量软件的潜力。这项工作还将利用角色模型的最新应用和扩展。尽管简单，这种组织并发和分布式系统的体系结构风格最近已经非常成功地用于一系列大规模的工业分布式应用程序，包括大容量电信系统和在线游戏，如微软Xbox上的Halo。因此，演员似乎是为我们的工作提供适当基础的理想人选。由于许多未来的分布式系统将是基于Web的，因此该研究还将建立在最先进的Web技术的基础上，并通过更好地支持大规模、健壮和可靠的分布式软件的设计来扩展它。总而言之，拟议的研究以一种新颖的方式解决了一个重要的、及时的问题。它借鉴了计算机科学的一系列领域的成果，将推动分布式和自适应软件开发的最先进水平，同时也是健壮和可靠的。它将通过帮助加拿大行业构建许多设想的物联网应用程序背后的软件，帮助他们实现物联网(IoT)的创新潜力。它将为使用当前的Web技术和JavaScript生态系统设计和构建可靠的大型系统提供亟需的支持。此外，它还将为范围广泛的学生(3名博士、8名理学硕士和5名理学学士)提供培训，并为他们提供成为热门毕业生所需的知识和技能，并为加拿大工业和学术界做出宝贵贡献。

Expected future economic, industrial and societal innovations place significant challenges on software and its underlying development processes. For instance, the software required for many of the envisioned Internet of Things or smart infrastructure applications will have to combine several characteristics to an unprecedented degree, including scale, distribution, heterogeneity, flexibility, evolvability, reliability, safety, and security. According to experts, current software engineering techniques and tools are insufficient to build software of this level of complexity effectively and efficiently. The proposed research will address this problem with a particular focus on distributed software with high robustness, reliability, and adaptation requirements. Robustness and reliability are basic quality attributes required by most software. Adaptation extends previously articulated visions of autonomic computing and facilitates, e.g., the use of software under changing or unknown operating conditions or usage patterns. The work will combine the state-of-the-art in distributed systems with concepts, notations, techniques and tools from fields that promote abstraction and automation including model-driven engineering (MDE), software architecture, and domain-specific languages, all of which have the proven potential to help control complexity and allow for the efficient, effective development of complex, high-quality software. The work will also leverage recent applications and extensions of the actor model. Despite its simplicity, this architectural style of organizing concurrent and distributed systems has recently seen very successful use for a range of large-scale, industrial distributed applications, including high-volume telecom systems and online games such as Halo on Microsoft's Xbox. Actors thus appear to be an ideal candidate to provide a suitable foundation to our work. Since many future distributed systems will be web-based, the research will also build on the state-of-the-art in web technology and extend it with better support for the design of large-scale, robust, and reliable distributed software. In sum, the proposed research addresses an important, timely problem in a novel way. Drawing on results from a range of fields in computer science, it will advance the state-of-the-art in the development of software that is distributed and adaptive, yet also robust and reliable. It will help Canadian industry realize the innovation potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) by helping them build the software behind many envisioned IoT applications. It will provide much needed support for the use of current web technology and the JavaScript ecosystem to design and build reliable large-scale systems. Moreover, it will provide training for a broad range of students (3 PhD, 8 MSc, and 5 BSc) and give them the knowledge and skills they need to become sought-after graduates and make valuable contributions to Canadian industry and academia.