Model-Driven Evolution Management for Microscopic Changes in Automation Systems (MoDEMMiCAS)

• Antragstellerinnen / Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Manfred Broy; Professorin Dr.-Ing. Birgit Vogel-Heuser
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Softwaretechnik und Programmiersprachen
• Förderung: Förderung von 2012 bis 2018
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 222278915

Automation systems constitute multi-disciplinary, software-intensive and long-living systems. In the development of such systems, two different frequency scales of changes (called evolution in this proposal) can be distinguished: The macroscopic and the microscopic scales. Macroscopic scale evolutions occur in time frames of up to years (e.g. upgrade to new product generations, or integration of new production facilities), while evolutionary changes on a microscopic scale can happen as frequently as hourly (e.g., bugfix in source code). While macroscopic scale evolutions are addressed in the current funding period, this project proposal focuses on microscopic scale evolutions. To this end, we initially study the different microscopic changes occurring in practice, inferring both a taxonomy for such changes and typical scenarios. Subsequently, we investigate modeling techniques to rigorously express microscopic changes in an interdisciplinary modeling language. To this approach, we extend the inter-disciplinary modeling approach of the first funding period, based on FOCUS -- a well-elaborated model-based engineering methodology particularly suited for developing reactive systems -- with information beyond logical behavior, called rich interface specifications. Those model serve as the basis for the study of rapid verification techniques based on contract-based reasoning, substantially extending previous work done in the first funding period, in order to provide fast and meaningful feedback to developers. The aforementioned results are be combined in a systematic methodology to integrate microscopic changes into a common, quality-assured system view, enabling the idea of continuous integration for the domain of automated production systems. The described contributions are be prototypically implemented in the AutoFOCUS tool, which is also used to evaluate the propose approach both regarding its applicability and usability.

• DFG-Verfahren: Schwerpunktprogramme
• Teilprojekt zu: SPP 1593: Design for Future - Managed Software Evolution