Facilitating Evolution during Design and Implementation

TL;DR

This paper discusses CRISTAL, a software system originally developed at CERN, which enables robust traceability and adaptability in managing complex, evolving data and system designs across various industries.

Contribution

It introduces CRISTAL's application in commercial settings, demonstrating its ability to facilitate evolution in system design and implementation through a description-driven approach.

Findings

Increased agility and revenue for companies using CRISTAL.

Enhanced data and provenance management at terabyte scale.

Improved system adaptability and future-proofing.

Abstract

The volumes and complexity of data that companies need to handle are increasing at an accelerating rate. In order to compete effectively and ensure their commercial sustainability, it is becoming crucial for them to achieve robust traceability in both their data and the evolving designs of their systems. This is addressed by the CRISTAL software which was originally developed at CERN by UWE, Bristol, for one of the particle detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, and has been subsequently transferred into the commercial world. Companies have been able to demonstrate increased agility, generate additional revenue, and improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness with which they develop and implement systems in various areas, including business process management (BPM), healthcare and accounting applications. CRISTALs ability to manage data and its provenance at the terabyte scale, with full traceability over extended timescales, together with its description-driven approach, has provided the flexible adaptability required to future proof dynamically evolving software for these businesses.