A Software Engineering Service Center for Scientific Software Development
Paper: 476
Session: P (talk)
Speaker: Pawlitzek, Gabriele, DLR, Braunschweig
Keywords: ?
A Software Engineering Service Center
for Scientific Software Development
Gabriele H. Pawlitzek
Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Luft- und Raumfahrt
Central Data Processing Division, European TeleCASE Center
Abstract:
The products and services of science and research organisations and
enterprises are increasingly based on software. This trend results not
only from the increasing utilisation of computer simulation replacing
more and more experiments, but also from new software intensive science
and research domains. This trend goes hand in hand with an increasing
demand for large and more and more complex, interdisciplinary software
systems. Due to this trend, science and research organisations today
spend significant amounts of their resources for the development and
maintenance of software systems. Thus, the effectiveness and efficiency
of a science and research organisation depends largely upon the
productivity and quality achieved in software development and
maintenance.
On the way towards the information society, software engineering and
software quality assurance more and more become cross-section
technologies, which are increasingly important for the competitiveness
not only of science and research, but for the entire economy. Today's
and tomorrow's products and services for the workplace as well as for
the daily life increasingly depend on the operativeness of software
systems of a permanently increasing complexity. Therefore, science and
research organisations involved in technology transfer or industrial
cooperation are more and more required to introduce and systematically
apply state-of-the-art as well as leading edge software engineering and
software quality assurance standards, methods and tools.
This presentation explains the strategy and concepts developed for the
establishment of a software engineering service center for scientific
software development at the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Luft- und
Raumfahrt (DLR) e.V., i.e. the German Aerospace Research Establishment.
It describes the know-how and services offered by this service center as
well as the experience gained during the introduction and application of
state-of-the-art software engineering standards, methods and tools in
research projects from different application domains. The lessons
learned during the establishment of this service center as well as in
projects of different size and duration are discussed and conclusion are
given. Finally, a brief outlook at the future of this software
engineering service center for scientific software development is given,
presenting the European Facility for Applied Software Technology
(EUROFAST), a competence center, that supports not only science and
research organisations and projects in software development and
maintenance, but also transfers this know-how into industry as well as
small and medium size enterprises focusing on high technology products
and services.
Bio:
Gabriele H. Pawlitzek is Head of the European TeleCASE Center at the
Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) e.V., i.e. the
German Aerospace Research Etsablishment. She holds a Dipl.-Ing. in
electrical engineering specialising in applied computer science from the
Technical University of Munich. She has been involved in introducing and
establishing software engineering and software quality assurance at the
German Aerospace Research Establishment for about 8 years. In this
framework she has built up the Software Engineering Laboratoy (SEL) at
the DLR research center in Oberpfaffenhofen as well as the CASE Service
Center (CSC) at the DLR research center in Braunschweig. In this
context, she is in charge of building up the European Facility for
Applied Software Technology (EUROFAST) and the European Technology
Transfer Node on HPCN (CAPRICE) funded by the European Commission, which
together with the existing CASE Service Center form the European
TeleCASE Center. This technology transfer center focuses on
state-of-the-art computer aided software engineering (CASE) and computer
supported cooperative working (CSCW) technologies for application in
scientific and industrial projects in research and industry as well as
in small and medium size enterprises.