REDSEEDS develops automated search for software repository
An EU-funded team of researchers has developed an automated way of searching a central software repository to extract software 'artefacts' from systems currently in use and to insert them in new systems. The EU-funded REDSEEDS ('Requirements-driven software development system') project was funded under the 'Information society technologies' Thematic area of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) to the tune of almost EUR 3 million. The tools and central repository created by REDSEEDS will make the job of software developers much easier, not to mention much less tedious and mind-numbing. Until now, developers had to write software programs from scratch regardless of whether similar software existed that had been created for a different application or situation. Thanks to REDSEEDS' innovation, developers will be able to produce software that meets their exact needs. The REDSEEDS team devised a requirement specification language permitting developers to use one user interface to frame their queries. The query process is automated once the requirements are inputted into the system. Meanwhile, the repository technology searches the repository and provides the answers users are looking for. 'The big difference with our platform is that it allows you to simply sketch out the requirements of your proposed new system, and then these are automatically compared with the requirements and capabilities of existing systems,' explained REDSEEDS coordinator Michal Smialek of Warsaw University of Technology and Infovide SA in Poland. 'The results are displayed to you with the differences and similarities between the old and new systems highlighted.' In a nutshell, a developer can single out and select the relevant artefacts of use to them that they can take from existing systems and input into the new system. 'In this context, by artefact we mean a software artefact which has been constructed on a computer by a software developer,' Professor Smialek said. 'This can be any kind of model or document or program which is the result of a software project,' he added. 'In a project, you may produce several artefacts which are design blueprints and then an artefact which is the code that tells the system how to work. The final program is also an artefact which is served by the other artefacts - that is the design and the code.' Automatically matching up the design blueprints and then assessing which bits of code can be reused allows developers to match up the requirements of a new system with those in earlier systems. The end result is a faster and more efficient tool for developers. 'When you have a similar problem to that solved previously, you put in the design and the code, and of course you might have to adapt it slightly to your new problem, but the majority of work was already done on the previous project,' Professor Smialek said. For example, 'somebody logging onto a website might have to press a button which causes a form to pop up which must be filled in. You press enter and the system checks the validity of the data and registers it in the memory', he said. 'This type of functionality can be used between different types of program domains, so doing something as different as registering a computer in a warehouse could have the same logic as registering a user in an online system - so much of the same system design and code could be copied.' Commercialisation of the repository will follow its validation. 'What it will do as a commercial product is to reduce considerably the amount of work required to develop a new software application, and that means the ability to develop more and larger systems using the same human resources, which is bound to have a wide appeal.' REDSEEDS partners are from Austria, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey and the UK.