Esprit Work-Programme 1998
Software Technologies
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Software is now not only a pervasive feature of "classical" information processing and control systems of all types, but also a key feature of a rapidly growing range of products and services from all sectors of European economic activity. For the majority of IT-based systems, software is the major cost component and increasingly the source of added value. Against this background the overall objective of the domain is to ensure that Europe's professional software developers in all sectors or the economy continue to have the skills, capabilities and key technologies that are needed to provide software intensive systems of outstanding quality and relevance and to respond in a timely manner to the constraints and opportunities of the market.
This objective is pursued via RTD activities in four sub-domains - Software-Intensive Systems Engineering, Emerging Software Technologies, Distributed Systems and Database Technology, and Human-Centred Interfaces - and technology transfer in two sub domains, one concerned with a set of accompanying actions designed to stimulate Software Best Practice and the second aiming to accelerate through Trial Applications and Leveraging Actions the transfer of innovative software technologies related to the four RTD sub-domains. The latter is considered as a necessary bridge between the development and limited trial of "prototypes" such as found in classical RTD projects and the subsequent phase of accelerating widespread take up as found, for example, in Best Practice activities.
It is expected that all proposals addressed to the RTD tasks in the following four sub domains should not only have generic potential, but should also be demonstrated in at least one applications context. In this regard the clear identification of "the user" and the user role is essential and the contribution to increased user benefits in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction (for example, ISO9241) should be evident.
R&D areas
Objectives
Ensure that European professional software developers in both vendor and user organisations have the world class skills and tools necessary to build the increasingly complex and varied systems required by the market place, also in view of the challenges and opportunities presented by the upcoming Information Infrastructure. The RTD activities identified in this sub domain are further complemented by the Software Best Practice actions set out in Activity1 (below) of the preparatory, support and transfer activities.
1.1System Development and Architectures Enhancement and demonstration of modelling and development tools addressing key phases or the whole system life-cycle from initial needs to product delivery, including the design and reuse of large multi-domain system architectures. The focus is on improving safety, customer satisfaction and time-to-market.
1.4Quality, Process Improvement and Re-engineering Provision and demonstration of methods and tools to re-engineer systems and software processes, also addressing integration with other business processes, and to improve the quality of processes and products, including those based on innovative technologies. The focus is on tailoring to the needs of organisations of different size.
1.35Systems Engineering and the Information Infrastructure Demonstration of how the Information Infrastructure can be effectively exploited to develop software-intensive systems in the context of virtual corporations, electronic commerce and mobile computing, as well as to trade trusted software components.
Objectives
To expand the spectrum of IT-supported applications by developing new software technologies and associated tools, techniques, methods and standards providing the basis for tackling a wide range of significant problems currently either poorly supported or not supported at all by more established information technologies.
To promote appropriate conditions to make possible the maturation and adoption of these emerging technologies that will in turn give rise to successful innovations in industry and services (for instance in electronic commerce).
1.6Knowledge Modelling and Management Models, supporting tools and standards to capture, represent, manage, manipulate, and inter-operate various categories and/or levels of abstraction of knowledge in an organisation or application will be developed and put into industrial practice including large KBS.
1.8Intelligent Control and Optimisation Further development of the underpinning software technologies, tools and techniques for automated control and optimisation techniques of complex and possibly safety critical systems. Development of integrative frameworks that support new and existing techniques dealing with large scale optimisation problems.
1.9Intelligent Products and Services Delivery of generic methods, techniques and tools to enable more intelligence to be added to products and services in a wide variety of application domains, for example intelligent sensors, consumer goods, long-living computer-integrated artefacts, business process management and planning, skills assessment, network computing products and applications.
Objectives
The evolution towards the global information society requires that information, computing resources and applications become accessible independently of their physical location. Distributed computing in the information society will be characterised by mobility and ubiquity on a global scale; the objective is to provide the technology to prepare and enable the deployment of open, distributed and inter-operable infrastructures supporting this evolution and reflecting users and market needs (e.g. security, performance).
1.13Development of Distributed Systems Provide models, methods, tools and guidelines to design, develop, implement and test distributed computing systems taking into account business and networked infrastructure requirements. Techniques from emerging software technologies should be considered.
1.14Interoperability Provide methods, tools and architectures for the evolution towards truly open and interoperable systems, building on existing ones, providing middleware and migration paths for the integration of legacy systems and ensuring wide compatibility and system coherence. Standards, both formal and de-facto, are expected to play an important role, as well as the requirements of users and business needs e.g. multimedia, mobility, real-time, high user interactivity.
1.15Distributed Systems Management Provide methods, tools and guidelines for the management and administration of distributed systems as well as those for defining and describing management policies. Management, being itself distributed, should support evolving requirements and enable federation and cooperation of independent sub-systems.
1.34Information Infrastructure Provision of software-based architectures, methods, tools and guidelines aimed at extending existing networked infrastructures, like the Internet, and services towards a wider industrial and commercial usage. Projects should reflect user needs, show the usability of the concepts, guarantee high quality and could address applications ranging from business (e.g. electronic commerce) to home.
Objectives
The Database Technology and Systems tasks aim to develop new methods and techniques, and to help those in existence reach maturity so as to further enable the development for the information infrastructure for the Information Society. To this purpose typical (but not exclusive) application contexts which should receive consideration include visual databases, global mobile information systems (coping with delocalisation of functions tasks and data), information-augmented service infrastructure (enabling development and evolution of information services), user profiled objects (coping with increasing availability and diversity of information and content), and dependable and inter-operable information systems with particular attention to business application in electronic commerce.
1.17Highly Performant DBMS and Extensions. Enhance and extend the DBMS core technology and functionalities to cope with highly distributed and heterogeneous information (e.g. multimedia, visual) and/or with complex data types (e.g. temporal, spatial and geographic data, sound, video, animation, legacy data and knowledge structure) used in demanding conditions.
1.18Future Integrated DBSs Develop the capability of future database and information intensive systems (e.g. cooperative information systems) to operate in heterogeneous environments and to cope with changes (organisational and technological). Support for transparent integration of information bases, data warehousing, data mining, complex distributed transactions (long lasting, cooperative, sequential) would be addressed.
1.21Intuitive Access to Information Develop generic "user objects" (e.g. software agents) which would enable, through only an application domain view (dynamically enriched), the intuitive access of users to large and complex distributed information bases and systems.
Objectives
Make future systems more user friendly, attractive and acceptable to the user through actions that are specifically designed to recognise the ever widening and complex range of interactions that need to be accommodated by software driven systems of all types. The advanced approaches developed and demonstrated by activities in this area are of particular relevance for the Information Society and should be applied across a wide spectrum of industrial and service sectors such as, manufacturing, command and control, training, transport, entertainment, home and electronic business systems.
1.22User-Centred Development Integration of user-centred approaches into methods and tools supporting the design and development of systems. "Usability Support Environments" should support users involvement and feed back through techniques and tools such as early story-board prototyping, simulations to evaluate user reaction, user profile analysis, etc.
1.25User Interface Technologies Accelerate the development of new or existing user interface components technologies and techniques which will improve individual interaction e.g. virtual reality, multimodality, natural language and speech interfaces. Develop techniques and tools supporting the production and optimisation, from user-centred specifications, of user interfaces.
1.26Application User Interface Interaction Develop generic interaction techniques and tools between the enabling technologies used to build applications and user interfaces. Typical techniques that may be addressed are: interaction with information navigation and data base access, intelligent agents, work flow, CSCW, decision support and graphical information systems.
Preparatory, support and transfer activities
Objectives
Promote best practice and thereby improve the software development process in industry, through the take-up of well founded and established but insufficiently deployed technological support, so as to achieve greater efficiency, higher quality, and greater economy. This is to be accomplished by applying state-of-the-art in software engineering techniques in a wide range of industries, taking into account moving targets and changing cultures in this rapidly evolving area. The full impact for Europe will be achieved through a multiplier effect, with the dissemination of results across national borders and across industrial sectors.
1.28Process Improvement Experiments PIEs are aimed at demonstrating software process improvement. These will follow a generic model and will demonstrate the effectiveness of software process improvement experiments on an underlying baseline project that is tackling a real development need for the proposing organisation.
1.37Proactive Software Best Practice Networks (ESBNETS) Establishment of European networks of organisations managing locally a set of closely related software best practice activities including hands-on activities - like the performance of small scale PIEs, assessments, improvement plans, etc. - information brokerage, experience exchange networks, demo sites, executive industrial visits or other schemes particularly tailored to meet the needs of the SMEs.
Objectives
To foster the timely adoption of leading-edge software technologies (still not commercially mature) by demonstrating their suitability and viability through building real domain applications for which these technologies, although potentially suitable, still present some level of risk. The objective is to accelerate the innovation process by allowing "innovative" users to secure early competitive advantage and technology providers to consolidate their technological offer to the market.
1.32Trial Applications Development and deployment of applications into real operational contexts, integrating one or several leading-edge software technologies in order to achieve demonstrable qualitative and quantitative benefits. Trial Applications should feature substantial user drive and demonstrate the potential for exploitation of the chosen technologies in one or more application domains. Technology enhancements may be carried out if required to meet specific crucial application needs. Depending on the market needs and the maturity of the technology, Trial Applications may be based on the application of a single technology, or may address the integration and application of several technologies.
1.33Leveraging Actions Implementation of suitable mechanisms to foster user-supplier relationships, increasing take-up and confidence in the use of technologies developed in RTD and Trial Applications.
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It was was last updated on 26 February 1998, and is maintained by Gerda Colling - gerda.colling@dg3.cec.be
