Building a federation of process support systems

ABSTRACT

The effort in software process support has focused so far on modeling and enacting processes. A certain amount of work has been done, but little has reached a satisfactory level of maturity and acceptance. In our opinion, this is due to the difficulty for a system to accommodate the very numerous aspects involved in software processes. A complete process support should cover topics ranging from low level tasks (like compiling) to organizational and strategic tasks. This includes process enhancement, resource management and control, cooperative work, etc. The environment must also be convenient for software engineers, team leaders, managers and so on; it must be able to describe details for efficient execution, and be high level for capturing, understanding, etc. As a matter of fact, the few tools that have reached sufficient maturity have focussed on a single topic and addressed a single class of users.It is our claim that no single system can provide a satisfactory solution except in a clearly defined subdomain. Thus we shifted our attention from finding the universal system to finding ways to make many different systems cooperate with their associated formalisms and process engines.This paper presents a novel approach for software process support environments based on a federation of heterogeneous and autonomous components. The approach has been implemented and experimented in the APEL environment. It is shown which architecture and technology is involved, how it works, which interoperability paradigms have been used, which problems we have solved and which issues are still under study.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.3 Software Management
          Subjects: Software process

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)

General Terms:
Design, Management, Performance, Theory

Keywords:
architecture, federation, interoperability, process, process support system