Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Software evolution is one of the key challenges in software development and the proposed research will result in a tool-supported method that will significantly simplify the evolution of framework-based software. The proposed research builds on our previous work on framework-specific modeling languages (FSMLs) with support for round-trip engineering. A FSML is a special kind of a domain-specific modeling language (DSL) that was designed to represent a set of concepts provided by a framework. The first objective of the proposed research is to demonstrate that FSMLs with round-trip engineering can effectively reduce the effort of evolving framework-based software. The second objective is to demonstrate that the effort of building such FSMLs can be reduced by mining for them in existing framework-based application code. The key novelties include demonstrating the feasibility of (1) effective round-trip engineering between domain-specific models and code and (2) mining application code for DSLs. The research will be carried out in collaboration with IBM Labs in Toronto and Ottawa. The results will be of interest to IBM's flagship development tools, Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software and Rational Software Architect. Both tools are developed mainly in the two labs of IBM Canada. The project will also result in a prototype implementation of tools supporting the developed method. Since these tools will be available as open-source software in the Eclipse environment, other Canadian companies will be able to easily use and benefit from the results. Finally, the project will contribute to the training of 8 highly-qualified personnel at the graduate level, and 9 highly-qualified personnel at the undergraduate level. These personnel will become professionals, teachers, researchers, and entrepreneurs, contributing to the growth of the knowledge-intensive sectors of the Canadian economy.