Title of the talk: "Engineering Software in the Future Era: The Role of Uncertainty"
On February 16, 2012, Professor Dr. Paola Inverardi will give a talk about "Engineering Software in the Future Era: The Role of Uncertainty" in the context of the SFB 901 colloquium.
Abstract:
In the next future we will be surrounded by a virtually infinite number of software applications that provide computational software resources in the open Globe. This will radically change the way software will be produced and used. Users will be keen on producing their own piece of software to better satisfy their needs, therefore with a goal oriented, opportunistic use in mind. The abundance of available software will promote the production of appropriate integration means (architectures, connectors, integration patterns). The produced software will need to be able to evolve, react and adapt quickly to a continuously changing environment, while guaranteeing dependability through (on-the-fly) validation.
The strongest adversary to this view is the lack of knowledge on the software, notably on its structure, behaviour, and execution context. Despite the possibility to extract observational models from existing software, a producer will always operate with software artefacts that exhibit a degree of uncertainty in terms of their functional and non functional characteristics. This very same problem recognized in the software engineering domain is faced in many other computer science domain, e.g., exploratory search and search computing, as well as software risk management, economics and other social domains. In the talk I’ll give evidence to this vision surveying recent trends in software research and emerging technologies. The ultimate thesis of the talk is that uncertainty is unavoidable and can only be controlled by making it explicit and by using it to drive the software production process itself.