MAP and OAR Methods: Techniques for Developing Core Assets for Software Product Lines from Existing Assets

While it is commonly recognized that legacy assets are, in most cases, an important contributor to the core assets for software product lines, systematic methods for making decisions on when to incorporate legacy assets (versus building new assets) have not been available. Two methods developed by the Software Engineering Institute fill this gap: the Mining Architectures for Product Lines (MAP) method and the Options Analysis for Reengineering (OAR) method. Both of these methods, which are described in this report, support different aspects of the Product Parts Pattern, which is applied to develop the core assets for a product line. The MAP method provides a suitability analysis of existing systems' software architectures as candidates for a product line architecture. After an architecture has been developed or chosen, the OAR method provides a disciplined approach for making decisions on rehabilitating legacy assets that may be incorporated into the product line asset base. This technical note describes both the MAP and OAR methods, the activities that each involves, and examples of applying them

Coming Attractions in Program Understanding

Program understanding is the (ill-defined) deductive process of acquiring knowledge about a software artifact through analysis, abstraction, and generalization. This report identifies some of the emerging technologies in program understanding. We present technical capabilities currently under development that may be of significant benefit to practitioners within five years. Three areas of work are explored: investigating cognitive aspects, developing support mechanisms, and maturing the practice

Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Foundations of Service-Oriented Architecture (FSOA 2007)

This report presents the results of the Foundations of Software-Oriented Architecture (FSOA) workshop held at the Third International Conference on Interoperability for Enterprise Software and Applications (I-ESA 2007). This workshop was organized to provide a forum for a concerted effort to develop a long-term, community-wide research agenda to bridge the gap between SOA research and the real needs of the practitioners in the field. An initial research agenda for SOA was presented along with three papers that focus on specific aspects of operations, engineering, and business challenges. The papers are each presented in this report, and the discussion and its implications for an evolving research agenda are summarized

An Application of an Iterative Approach to DoD Software Migration Planning

In recent years, system modernization has received much attention within the Department of Defense (DoD). Typically, that attention has focused on the technical and acquisition issues associated with the new system. Less attention has been paid to the equally important issue of planning the migration from the old system to the new system. This technical note reports on the early results of an approach that is currently being piloted to support software migration planning. This approach focuses on deriving actionable mini-plans for focus areas that are identified in an initial increment of an overall migration plan

DoD Software Migration Planning

The DoD often faces the challenge of migrating from legacy systems to new target systems. Such migration efforts represent a complex engineering problem. These efforts call for a migration plan to supplement the development plan. The migration plan addresses issues associated with phasing out legacy systems and moving to the new system. These issues include user interface compatibility, database compatibility, transition support, system interface compatibility, and training. By producing and implementing a migration plan, a development organization can help a user community make the transition in an orderly fashion. This note describes migration planning, identifies influencing factors, outlines a set of migration planning activities, and offers a set of guidelines for the migration planning process

A Research Agenda for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Maintenance and Evolution of Service-Oriented Systems

Despite recent reports that it has failed, the reality is that Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) remains the best option available for systems integration and leverage of legacy systems. The technologies to implement SOA will certainly evolve to address emerging needs, but its concepts will remain. To address those needs and concerns that SOA is potentially being stretched beyond its limits, a significant and coordinated research program is needed. The SEI has developed an SOA Research Agenda with participation from a broad cross-section of the research community. The core of the agenda is a taxonomy that classifies topics into the business, engineering, and operations aspects of service-oriented systems, along with a set of cross-cutting aspects. Based on this taxonomy, the agenda outlines research areas, each of which is identified with its rationale, overview of current research, and delineation of research challenges and gaps. This report outlines the SOA Research Agenda. It also provides detail on specific research challenges related to the maintenance and evolution of service-oriented systems. The report concludes with a discussion of next steps in the evolution of the research agenda

Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on a Research Agenda for Maintenance and Evolution of Service-Oriented Systems (MESOA 2010)

The Fourth International Workshop on Maintenance and Evolution of Service-Oriented Systems (MESOA 2010), organized by members of the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute's technical staff, was held at the 26th International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM 2010) in Timisoara, Romania, on September 17, 2010. The goal for MESOA 2010 was to share current research efforts and discuss emerging technologies in the maintenance and evolution of service-oriented systems. A second goal of the workshop was to identify areas of future work needed to address existing gaps and problems in the taxonomy of research topics in service-oriented architecture (SOA). This report summarizes the workshop and includes the accepted papers that were the basis for the presentations given during the workshop. Topics include using simulation models to evolve business processes, a requirements-driven framework for root cause analysis in SOA environments, SOA integration as an alternative to source migration, proactive adaptation as illustrated by the S-Cube service life cycle, a dynamic framework for quality web-service discovery, a characterization of policies that govern SOAs, and context-driven adaptive monitoring for supporting SOA governance. The report concludes with highlights from the discussions among workshop attendees.</p

Application of Options Analysis for Reengineering in a Lead System Integrator Environment

Because most organizations have a substantial legacy base of existing software assets, few development efforts start from scratch. However, there has not been a systematic way to identify components for reuse or to understand the types of changes that would be required for insertion into a software product line architecture or a new software architecture. Options Analysis for Reengineering (OAR) is an approach for making decisions on mining software assets. Mining involves rehabilitating parts of an old system for use in a new system. OAR identifies potential reusable components and analyzes the changes that would be needed to rehabilitate them for reuse within a software product line or new software architecture. OAR also provides an analysis of mining options, as well as the cost, effort, level of difficulty, and risks associated with each option. Recently, OAR has been applied to help a lead system integrator (LSI) make effective decisions on reuse. An LSI is the agent for an organization that is responsible for acquiring a large software-intensive system or system of systems. This note describes the use of OAR to guide decision making on mining assets within an LSI context, referred to as LSI OAR

Issues in Tool Acquisition

This technical report identifies issues involved in the acquisition of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools. Among the issues identified and discussed are cost, performance, process support, maintenance, data management, tool integration, and standardization. The report concludes with recommendations intended for individuals or groups responsible for acquiring CASE tools

System-of-Systems Governance: New Patterns of Thought

Systems of systems introduce complications for information technology (IT) governance because their individual system components exhibit considerable autonomy. This technical note examines the ways in which six key characteristics of good IT governance are affected by the autonomy of individual systems in a system of systems. The characteristics discussed are (1) collaboration and authority, (2) motivation and accountability, (3) multiple models, (4) expectation of evolution, (5) highly fluid processes, and (6) minimal centrality. This report examines each characteristic in detail and, where possible, provides guidance for the practitioner