Prof. Antônio Augusto Medeiros Fröhlich visits Fraunhofer FIRST, Pure-Systems GmbH and University of Erlangen

In September 2002, Prof. Dr. Antônio Augusto Medeiros Fröhlich carried out a scientific mission within the context of Project SNOW. During this mission, he was able to directly interact with all of SNOW German partners: Fraunhofer FIRST Institute in Berlin (formerly GMD-FIRST), Pure-Systems GmbH in Magdeburg and University of Erlangen. The main goal of this mission was to identify scenarios in which the application of Domain Engineering techniques under development on both sides could be joint deployed.

For the Brazilian side, Professor Fröhlich's Application-Oriented System Design (AOSD) approach covers a domain engineering strategy that is able to guide the development of families of highly configurable software components. Such components can be automatically assembled to build a variety of systems according to specific user requirements. This approach is already being applied to EPOS, the basic run-time support system of SNOW under developed at UFSC/LISHA.

For the German side, Pure-Systems and the University of Erlangen have developed interesting Generative Programming tools, including a powerful Aspect-Oriented Programming tool with its own Aspect Language and Aspect Weaver, and a comprehensive Feature Modeling tool to assist complex software configuration. In addition, Fraunhofer FIRST is currently fostering improvements in the UML scene. A series of ad-ons to traditional UML tools is being developed in order to cover common deficiencies of such tools with regard to component-based software development (e.g. requirement analysis, generation, configuration, and composition of software components).

During the mission, it was agreed upon an experiment to adapt some of the software components of EPOS so they can be automatically manipulated by ASPECTC++, the aspect-oriented language from Uni-Erlangen. This experiment shall corroborate several goals of both projects: on the one hand, it shall verify AOSD ability to guide the design process in such a way that modeled abstractions and aspects can be automatically manipulated by AOP toos; on the other hand, it shall verify that AspectC++ is able to manipulated third-part software components.

The workplan proposed for the mission was fully executed, to know:

  1. LISHA's recent developments were presented at the University of Magdeburg (including Pure-System staff), at Fraunhofer FIRST and at the University of Erlangen.
  2. EPOS installation at Fraunhofer FIRST was updated.
  3. EPOS and Fraunhofer FIRST tools started to be integrated. A student will be sent to Berlin early next year to take this activity in depth. He will be founded exclusively by Fraunhofer FIRST (not a SNOW mission).
  4. EPOS and Uni-Erlangen AOP tools started to be integrated by means of the experiment described above. A scientific mission in the scope of SNOW shall be executed next year to conclude this experiment.
  5. EPOS and Pure-System FM tools were proved to interact smoothly.