Unibo Team Leader:Prof. Davide Sangiorgi, Dip. di Scienze dell'Informazione
Software systems are central for the infrastructure of modern society. To justify the huge investments such systems need to live for decades. This requires software which is highly adaptable. Software systems must support a high degree of (spatial) variability to accomodate a range of requirements and operating conditions, and temporal evolvability to allow
these parameters to change over time. Current approaches to reusability and maintenance are inadequate to cope with the dynamics and longevity of future software applications and infrastructures, e.g. for e-commerce, e-health and e-government.
At the same time, we rely increasingly on systems that provide a high degree of trustworthiness. Thus, the major challenge facing software construction in the next decades is high adaptability combined with trustworthiness. A severe limitation of current development practices is the missing rigour of models and property specifications. Without a formal notation of distributed, component-based systems it is impossible to achieve automation for consistency checking, enforcement of
security, generation of trustworthy code, etc. Furthermore, it does not suffice to simply extend current formal approaches.
We propose to take an empirically successful, yet informal software development paradigm and put it on a formal basis.
Specifically, we will turn software product family (SWPF) development into a rigorous approach. The technical core of the project is an Abstract Behavioural Specification language which will allow precise description of SWPF features and components and their instances. The main project outcome is a methodological and tool framework achieving not merely
far-reaching automation in maintaining dynamically evolving software, but an unprecedented level of trust while informal processes are replaced with rigorous analyses based on formal semantics. This includes the perspective of designing self-adapting software systems.
Coordinator
CHALMERS TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLA AB (Sweden)
Other participants
UNIVERSITETET I OSLO (Norway)
KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN (Sweden)
UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID (Spain)
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET KAISERSLAUTERN (Germany)
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM-UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
- Dip. di Scienze dell'Informazione
- Resp. scientifico: Prof. Davide Sangiorgi
STICHTING CENTRUM VOOR WISKUNDE EN INFORMATICA (The Netherlands)
NORSK REGNESENTRAL STIFTELSE (Norway)
Fredhopper B.V. (The Netherlands)
FRAUNHOFER-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FOERDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG E.V (Germany)
KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN (Belgium)
Start date 01/03/2009
End date 28/02/2013
Duration 48 months
Project cost 6.889.340 Euro
Project Funding 5.270.000 Euro
Subprogramme Area FET Proactive
Contract type Collaborative Project