Reflection and Reification in Process System Evolution: Experience and Opportunity
EWSPT '01 Proceedings of the 8th European Workshop on Software Process Technology
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Process programming represents the application of the software engineering idiom and technology to the development of superior software processes. There is a substantial and growing body of research into software process technology in general and process programming approaches in particular. Much of this research concerns process languages. We are now in a position to draw some conclusions about the ways in which process languages may contribute to software process engineering. Furthermore, we can begin to make inferences regarding the original hypothesis that process programming is an applicable and feasible technology for software process support. We take the fundamental aim of software process research to be the production of better quality software in less time and at less cost. Thus, we emphasize issues in linguistic support for software production processes. These issues include the distinction between process requirements and process language requirements, language requirements for the representation and execution of production processes, granularity of process representations, and process visualization. We also examine issues of language definition and use, specifically alternative architectures for linguistic support of processes, and issues related to meta-capabilities and meta-processes, especially as they affect production processes. Analysis of these issues leads to the identification of particular programming approaches that are more or less able to contribute to particular problems in software process engineering. It further allows us to draw inferences about the fundamental applicability and feasibility of process programming to software process engineering. These inferences concern the importance of code and non-code representations, the diversity of language paradigms, the importance of rigorous semantics, and the need for and difficulty of process evolution.