Thematic domain analysis for ocean modeling

Jung, Reiner; Gundlach, Sven; Hasselbring, Wilhelm

doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2022.105323

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The evaluation included domain experts working as Scientific Modelers, research software engineers (RSEs) and Gatekeepers. The discussion of the major requirements of the DSL itself is based on a previous domain analysis through semi-structured interviews with domain experts and a thematic analysis (TA) of the interview results, as documented in Jung et al (2022aJung et al ( , 2022b.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, prior to the design and implementation phases of TDD-DSL, requirements for the DSL and its tooling were identified through semi-structured interviews with domain experts from the computational science domain coupled with a TA approach. A detailed description can be found in Jung, Gundlach, and Hasselbring (2022b).…”

Section: Motivation and Rationale For Tdd-dslmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Facilitating Test-Driven Development via Domain-Specific Languages in Computational Science Software Engineering

Gundlach,

Jung,

Hasselbring

2023

Preprint

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Research software plays a critical role in computational science. Therefore, the software should be of high quality. Producing such software involves efforts not only in initial development, but also during maintenance. One concept for improving the quality of software and reducing maintenance efforts is Test-Driven Development (TDD), which involves implementing tests, e.g., unit tests, as a specification for development. The effects are high test coverage and better overall software quality, but also additional effort in implementing tests. By separation of concerns, such additional efforts can be facilitated through the use of tailored notations such as domain-specific languages (DSLs). DSLs provide different levels of abstraction, for example, to separate the definition of tests from other concerns in software development. Not only does this incentivize research software engineers (RSEs) to write tests, but it also helps reduce the time required to write tests. The DSL TDD-DSL addresses this to facilitate the implementation of TDD using the Fortran Unit Testing Framework (UTF) pFUnit 4.0. TDD-DSL is focused on unit test definition and source code integration. It is implemented in Python for system under tests (SUTs) written in Fortran 90 or later. To reduce the effort of defining tests, TDD-DSL separates the test definition from the implementation and setup. Especially the latter can cause additional effort in practice, which can be mitigated by using code generators provided with the DSL tooling. The DSL allows describing test conditions as assertions and test cases as collections of assertions. TDD-DSL provides content assist within code editors for the underlying UTF, reducing the effort required in its deployment. It also supports parsing the SUT to expand the content assist with source code information and high-level error messaging for the test description. The content assist includes publicly available variables, types, functions and routines. TDD-DSL further supports the definition of unit values such as SI units to help Scientific Modelers check unit values in the software at runtime. For this purpose, the DSL tooling enables the generation of code templates for new implementations in the source code according to the defined tests. To simplify extending the DSL and improve overall maintainability, the DSL tooling employs the language server protocol (LSP) and also public available tools such as the ANTLR4 grammar. Using LSP also enables a multi-editor support to integrate the DSL tooling into different editors and IDEs. In this paper we report on the design and implementation of the DSL and its tooling as well as the evaluation with Scientific Modelers and RSEs.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Motivation and Rationale For Tdd-dslmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facilitating Test-Driven Development via Domain-Specific Languages in Computational Science Software Engineering

Gundlach,

Jung,

Hasselbring

2023

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Their code is, partly, decades old. They can start as small models, which often evolve into large, complex models or are integrated into other models [15]. The ESMs are continually modified and enhanced to provide insights for specific research questions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modularizing Earth system models for interactive simulation

Claus

Gundlach

Hasselbring

et al. 2022

Informatik Spektrum

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Interactive exploration of Earth system simulations may have great potential to improve the scientific modeling process. It will allow monitoring of the state of the simulation via dashboards presenting real-time diagnostics within a digital twin world. We present the state of the art for Earth system modeling in this context. Cross-domain data handling and fusion will make it possible to integrate model and observation data in the context of digital twins of the ocean. Domain-driven modularization of monolithic Earth system models allows one to recover interfaces for such a cross-domain fusion. Reverse engineering with static and dynamic analysis enables modularization of Earth system models. The modularization does not only help with restructuring existing Earth system models, it also makes it possible to integrate additional scientific domains into the interactive simulation environment.

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