Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The roadmapping process attempts to map out a path over a period of time,
taking into account the perspectives outlined above and also taking account of
at least expected developments which could have a material impact during the
period under consideration. This is what the EternalS project is undertaking and
the results of the project will be documented via the roadmaps. The plan has
been for three versions of the roadmaps deliverables for the project to be pro-
duced. Two have already been produced; the first version, D2.1 was created in
July 2011 and the second D2.2 was created in April 2012. A number of EU funded
FET ( Future and Emerging Technology ) projects (CONNECT, HATS, Living-
Knowledge, and Secure Change) which are oriented towards research which is of
relevance to Eternal systems, have been involved in the EternalS roadmapping
process and have contributed to the roadmap deliverables. The TSSG research
group, part of Waterford Institute of Technology leads the roadmap activity as
editors and contributors.
3 A Vision for Eternal Systems Research
A software system must evolve, or it becomes progressively less satisfactory.
The question of how to cope with imposed or induced change is particularly
challenging in the context of trends driving the Future Internet. At the infras-
tructure level, the Future Internet will leverage new technologies and protocols
to promote the convergence of traditional and small/portable devices on a much
larger scale than present. At the service level, systems will no longer be able to
address a closed universe of stakeholders. Additionally, market forces, techno-
logical innovation and new business models will push system fragmentation even
further.
On the other hand, those complex, fragmented systems of the Future Internet
(or at least parts of them) are expected to be operational for a very long time.
Design and implementation decisions must be made in a broad context, consid-
ering long-term goals under the constraint of currently available resources and
technologies. To cope with these challenges, long-living Future Internet Systems
need to be exceptionally flexible. They will have to constantly evolve to adjust to
the changing requirements. However, evolution represents a constant threat to
the systems quality. Since largescale, long lived software-based systems (Eternal
Systems) increasingly pervade our daily life and put an ever rising number of
digital assets at risk, it is a topic of greater significance. The questions of how
to build and manage Eternal Systems leads to a broad array of research chal-
lenges. In recent years, there have been a lot of studies aimed at characterizing
the evolution of a software system. Many of these studies analyse the behaviour
of a variable over a given period of observation. How does the size of a software
system evolve? What about its complexity? Does the number of defects increase
over time or does it remain stable?
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