ALIVE · Coordination, Organisation and Model Driven Approaches for Dynamic,Flexible, Robust Software and Services Engineering

New generations of networked applications based on the notion of software services that can be dynamically deployed, adjusted and composed will make it possible to create radically new types of software systems. In turn, this will require profound changes in the way in which software systems are designed, deployed and managed – exchanging existing, primarily top-down design in isolation" engineering, to new approaches which are based on integrating new functionalities and behaviours into existing running systems of already active, distributed and interdependent processes. <br/><br/>The ALIVE project is based around the central idea that many of the strategies used today to organise the vastly complex interdependencies found in human social, economic behaviour will be essential to structuring future service based software systems. More specifically the project aims to combine cutting edge Coordination and Organisation mechanisms (providing flexible, high-level means to model the structure of interactions between services in the environment) and Model Driven Design (providing for automated transformations from models into multiple target platforms) to create a framework for software and services engineering for "live" open systems of active services. <br/><br/>The project will 1) develop an advanced framework for application development, deployment and management in service environments, 2) develop new engineering techniques and toolsm 3) develop a methodology for dynamic, "live" service design and maintenance, and 4) layer the framework directly on emerging architectures and toolkits for service oriented and web services systems. Results will be delivered in an open content and open source manner in order to foster take-up, reuse and to support ongoing research in the domain. The project also includes three challenging case studies from the domains of information services for citizens, mobile device applications and crisis management."