Uma abordagem para linha de produtos de software científico baseada em ontologia e workflow

Abstract

A way to improve reusability and maintainability of a family of software products is through the Software Product Line (SPL) approach. In some situations, such as scientific applications for a given area, it is advantageous to develop a collection of related software products, using an SPL approach. Scientific Software Product Lines (SSPL) differs from the Software Product Lines due to the fact that SSPL uses an abstract scientific workflow model. This workflow is defined according to the scientific domain and, using this abstract workflow model, the products will be instantiated. Analyzing the difficulties to specify scientific experiments, and considering the need for scientific applications composition for its implementation, an appropriated semantic support for the domain analysis phase is necessary. Therefore, this work proposes an approach based on the combination of feature models and ontologies, named PL-Science, to support the specification and conduction of scientific experiments. The PL-Science approach, which considers the context of SPL and aims to assist scientists to define a scientific experiment, specifying a workflow that encompasses scientific applications of a given experiment, is presented during this disser tation. Using SPL concepts, scientists can reuse models that specify the scientific product line and carefully make decisions according to their needs. This work also focuses on the use of ontologies to facilitate the process of applying Software Product Line to scientific domains. Through the use of ontology as a domain model, we can provide additional information as well as add more semantics in the context of Scientific Software Product Lines.