=========================================
<ITO_PROJECT_INFORMATION>

<PROJECT_SUMMARY>

<AO_NUMBER>
D961
</AO_NUMBER>

<CONTRACTOR_OR_ORGANIZATION_NAME>
Northeastern University
</CONTRACTOR_OR_ORGANIZATION_NAME>

<SUBCONTRACTOR_LIST>
   <SUBCONTRACTOR>

      <SUB_NAME>
      Purdue University
      </SUB_NAME>

   </SUBCONTRACTOR>

</SUBCONTRACTOR_LIST>

<PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR_LIST>

   <PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR>
      <FIRSTNAME>
      Karl
      </FIRSTNAME>
      <LASTNAME>
      Lieberherr 
      </LASTNAME>
      <ADDRESS1>
      College of Computer Science, Cullinane Hall
      </ADDRESS1>
      <ADDRESS2>
      Northeastern University
      </ADDRESS2>
      <CITY>
      Boston
      </CITY>
      <STATE>
      MA
      </STATE>
      <ZIP>
      02115
      </ZIP>
      <PHONE>
      (617) 373 2077
      </PHONE>
      <FAX>
      (617) 373 5121
      </FAX>
      <EMAIL_ADDRESS>
        lieberherr@ccs.neu.edu 
      </EMAIL_ADDRESS>
   </PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR>

</PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR_LIST>

<TITLE_OF_EFFORT>

Evolution of Software Via Adaptive Programming

</TITLE_OF_EFFORT>

<RELATED_INFORMATION>
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter/projects/darpa2/
</RELATED_INFORMATION>

<OBJECTIVE>
Improve the productivity of software developers by an order
of magnitude through tools and a theory of adaptive programming.
Leverage existing commercial technology such as Java, the Unified Modeling
Language and CORBA.
</OBJECTIVE>

<APPROACH>
Adaptive Programming (AP)
works by splitting an object-oriented 
program into two parts: the behavior and
the object containment structure (class graph).  A special language
mechanism, called a succinct subgraph specification allows the behavior
part of the program to automatically adapt to a large number of changes
in the class graph.  This effectively loosens the object model enough
that makes many maintenance and evolution tasks for OO programs become
simpler when using AP.

<P>
AP directly supports evolutionary design: it becomes easier
to change objects and to make the software work again.
It becomes easier to reuse programs since adaptive programs
commit to less object structure than traditional programs.
</APPROACH>

<RECENT_96_ACCOMPLISHMENT>
New Start, but John Salasin supplemented my existing NSF grant two years ago.

Developed a generic behavior modification mechanism reusing
object-oriented principles, and applied it
to modify traversals in adaptive programs.
Leads to more expressiveness and easier reuse of adaptive programs.
Prototyped context objects using STKLOS.
Our Foundations of Software Engineering '96 paper on context objects

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter/biblio/context.html

contains the results.
</RECENT_96_ACCOMPLISHMENT>

<RECENT_96_ACCOMPLISHMENT>
Interacted with Neeraj Sangal, the founder of Tendril Software, Inc.
He uses the key ideas of AP in the first product. 
</RECENT_96_ACCOMPLISHMENT>

<RECENT_96_ACCOMPLISHMENT>

Jens Palsberg's paper on using constraints to compose adaptive programs

ftp://ftp.ccs.neu.edu/pub/people/lieber/class-graph-inf-P96.ps

A pattern-based explanation of adaptiveness

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter/adaptive-patterns/AOP/

</RECENT_96_ACCOMPLISHMENT>

<RECENT_96_ACCOMPLISHMENT>
We filed a US patent of compiling adaptive programs.
</RECENT_96_ACCOMPLISHMENT>

<FY1997_PLAN>
Demeter/Java in Demeter/Java with static context objects

This is a significantly improved implementation of Demeter/C++
for Java, using our latest insights in Adaptive Programming.

</FY1997_PLAN>

<FY1997_PLAN>
To make it easy to use our technology without installation, we develop
a GUI for Demeter/Java so that the tools can be used through
the WWW without software installation requirements.
</FY1997_PLAN>

<FY1997_PLAN>
We provide support for the Unified Modeling Language (class diagrams).
</FY1997_PLAN>

<TECHNOLOGY_TRANSITION>

We continue our collaboration with Tendril Software which develops
a product for developing adaptive programs.

Adaptive Programming is actively used in class projects at Northeastern
University for educational and research purposes and to evaluate
AP. See

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter/evaluation/evaluation-of-adaptive-programming

for information on the results.

The usefulness of Adaptive Programming hinges on how common
traversals are in real-life software. Fortunately, the pattern community
introduced a pattern called Visitor which conceptualizes 
traversals. Therefore, we collect information about how often the
Visitor pattern is used in practice to make a strong case for AP.

We maintain our popular WWW site:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter

</TECHNOLOGY_TRANSITION>

</PROJECT_SUMMARY>