3TU.BSR: Big Software on the Run
Funded by:
3TU.NIRICT
Duration: January 2015
until January 2019
Contact:
prof.dr. J.C. van de Pol
Summary of the project
Context
Millions of lines of code - written in different languages by different people at different times, and operating on a variety of platforms - drive the systems performing key processes in our society. The resulting software needs to evolve and can no longer be controlled a priori as is illustrated by a range of software problems. The 3TU.BSR research program will develop novel techniques and tools to analyze software systems in vivo - making it possible to visualize behavior, create models, check conformance, predict problems, and recommend corrective actions.
To deal with Big Software on the Run (BSR), we propose to shift the main focus from a priori software design to a posteriori software analytics thereby exploiting the large amounts of event data generated by today's systems. The core idea is to study software systems in vivo, i.e., at runtime and in their natural habitat. We would like to understand the actual (desired or undesired) behavior of software. Running software needs to adapt to evolving and diverging environments and requirements. This forces us to consider software artifacts as "living organisms operating in a changing ecosystem". This paradigm shift requires new forms of empirical investigation that go far beyond the common practice of collecting error messages and providing software updates.
Project
The project will run for a period of four years and is supported by the three Dutch technical universities (Eindhoven University of Technology, TU Delft, and University of Twente). It was initiated by 3TU.NIRICT, the Netherlands Institute for Research on ICT, which comprises all ICT research of the three universities of technology in the Netherlands. The PhD positions will run for 4 years. The three postdocs will be appointed for 2-3 years.
The project consists of subprojects, with 6 PhD students and 3 Postdocs
- Automatically Discovering Behavioral Software Models from Software Event Data
(Van der Aalst & Van Deursen) at Eindhoven University of Technology - Model-based Visualization of Software Event Data
(Van Wijk & Huisman) at Eindhoven University of Technology - Exceptional Patterns (Van Deursen & Van Wijk) at TU Delft
- Monitoring Concurrent Software (Huisman & Lagendijk) at University of Twente
- Privacy Preserving On-line Conformance Checking (Lagendijk & Van de Pol) at TU Delft
- Parallel Checking and Prediction (Van de Pol & Van der Aalst) at University of Twente
The three postdoc positions are:
- A postdoc related to PhD projects 1 & 2 at Eindhoven University of Technology
- A postdoc related to PhD projects 3 & 5 at TU Delft
- A postdoc related to PhD projects 4 & 6 at University of Twente