| EPSRC Reference: |
GR/J11034/01 |
| Title: |
EVOLUTION OF LARGE SOFTWARE SYSTEMS |
| Principal Investigator: |
Warboys, Professor B |
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| Department: |
Computer Science |
| Organisation: |
Victoria University of Manchester, The |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research (Pre-FEC) |
| Starts: |
01 July 1993 |
Ends: |
31 August 1996 |
Value (£): |
119,935
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
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The ELSS project aims to develop and evaluate tools and techniques for evolving large software systems. Key themes are maintaining an explicit architecture for the evolving system, and an explicit model of the evolution process. The evaluation is based on a demonstrator retail point-of-sale system which will be available to other researchers.Progress:The ELSS project objectives are being addressed by complementary work at Southampton and Manchester. This describes the work at Manchester; Southamptons is reported separately.Earlier work on OBM has been extended to give a formal method for evolving software systems. There are two published papers on this: one presented at Formal Methods Europe 1994 (FME'94), the other accepted for the European Workshop on Software Process Technology 1995 (EWSPT'95). Central to the method is a view of the evolving system as a hierarchic product tower. This enables engineers to view the system at multiple levels of abstraction, and verify the consistency between levels. This method is being applied to the retail point-of-sale components (C++ implementations) developed by Southampton.A process model for systems' evolution has been developed. This model is based on the need to manage consistency relationships between various views of the system: its specification, design model, design paradigm, implementation etc. An implementation of this model on ICLs ProcessWise Integrator (version 1.0) has been produced . We are supporting Southamptons use of this model during an initial evolution experiment of the retail system. The current process model has two major weaknesses: lack of support for the design hierarchy, and no facilities to evolve the process. There is ongoing work in these areas. A revised process model will be produced for future evolution experiments.
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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Impacts |
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| Description |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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