Software Engineering Institute

There is an increasing trend towards interconnected systems of systems (SoSs) that provide capabilities that are not available in a single system. Many organizations, including the DoD, are already implementing these SoSs. However, existing software and system engineering practices do not scale well to SoS. SoS engineering is still an open problem with significant challenges. Understanding these challenges and providing engineering solutions will require a two-pronged approach:

• A top-down approach that deals with understanding SoS at an abstract level. This view is essential to understand the key concerns that exist in any SoS independent of the concrete technologies that are used to implement the SoS.
• A bottom-up approach that focuses on abstracting the concepts and lessons learned from specific examples of engineering SoSs. 

Currently, the most common approaches for engineering software-intensive SoSs are service-oriented architecture (SOA), grid computing, and cloud computing, all of which are distributed computing paradigms. In the future, newer technologies may replace or complement these existing engineering approaches. This presentation focuses on the bottom-up approach by exploring areas where lessons learned from implementation of service-oriented systems are abstracted and applied to SoS.