Unite: an adapter for transforming analysis tools to web services via OSLC

Abstract

This paper describes Unite, a new tool intended as an adapter for transforming non-interactive command-line analysis tools to OSLC-compliant web services. Unite aims to make such tools easier to adopt and more convenient to use by allowing them to be accessible, both locally and remotely, in a unified way and to be easily integrated into various development environments. Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) is an open standard for tool integration and was chosen for this task due to its robustness, extensibility, support of data from various domains, and its growing popularity. The work is motivated by allowing existing analysis tools to be more widely used with a strong emphasis on widening their industrial usage. We have implemented Unite and used it with multiple existing static as well as dynamic analysis and verification tools, and then successfully deployed it internationally in the industry to automate verification tasks for development teams in Honeywell. We discuss Honeywell's experience with using Unite and with OSLC in general. Moreover, we also provide the Unite Client (UniC) for Eclipse to allow users to easily run various analysis tools directly from the Eclipse IDE.