Eoin Woods

Industrial Architectural Assessment Using TARA

Scenario based architectural assessment is a well established approach for assessing architectural designs. However scenario-based methods are not always usable in an industrial context, where they can be perceived as complicated and expensive to use. In this paper we explore why this may be the case and define a simpler technique called TARA which has been designed for use in situations where scenario based methods are unlikely to be successful. The method is illustrated through a case study that explains how it was applied to the assessment of two quantitative analysis systems.

The system context architectural viewpoint

A common requirement when describing the architecture of a software system is the ability to define the environment of a system, in terms of its external dependencies. In a view-based architectural description approach this need is met by adding a Context view to the architectural description and ideally defining a corresponding Context viewpoint to guide and standardise such views. This short paper explains the benefits of adding such a view to an architectural description and provides an outline definition of a corresponding viewpoint to explain the content of these views.

Unifying software architecture with its implementation

This paper proposes a research challenge to narrow the gap between the architecture and implementation of a software system. We discuss the situation today, where little of a systems architecture and design is directly represented in the source code of its implementation and explore why this is a problem and the benefits that might flow from narrowing this gap. We then discuss how the situation could be improved by the creation of technologies that allow the design and architecture of a system to be directly related to its source code and outline the requirements that we believe that any such technology would need to fulfill. Finally, we consider the likely results of widespread application of such a technology and the benefits that would follow.

How Software Architecture can Frame, Constrain and Inspire System Requirements

Historically a system’s requirements and its architectural design have been viewed as having a simple relationship where the requirements drove the architecture and the architecture was designed in order to meet the requirements. In contrast, our experience is that a much more dynamic relationship can be achieved between these key activities within the system design lifecycle, that allows the architecture to constrain the requirements to an achievable set of possibilities, frame the requirements making their implications clearer, and inspire new requirements from the capabilities of the system’s architecture. In this article, we describe this relationship, illustrate it with a case study drawn from our experience and present some lessons learned that we believe will be valuable for other software architects.

Architecture Description Leveraging Model Driven Engineering and Semantic Wikis

A previous study, run by some of the authors in collaboration with practitioners, has emphasized the need to improve architectural languages in order to (i) make them simple and intuitive enough to communicate effectively with project stakeholders, and (ii) enable formality and rigour to allow analysis and other automated tasks. Although a multitude of languages have been created by researchers and practitioners, they rarely address both of these needs. In order to reconcile these divergent needs, this paper presents an approach that (i) combines the rigorous foundations of model-driven engineering with the usability of semantic wikis, and (ii) enables continuous syncronization between them, this allows software architects to simultaneously use wiki pages for communication and models for model-based analysis and manipulation. In this paper we explain how we applied the approach to an industry-inspired case study using the Semantic Media Wiki wiki engine and a model-driven architecture description implemented within the Eclipse Modeling Framework. We also discuss how our approach can be generalized to other wiki-based and model-driven technologies.

Using an Architecture Description Language to Model a Large-Scale Information System -- An Industrial Experience Report

An organisation that had developed a large Information System wanted to embark on a programme of significant evolution for the system. As a precursor to this, it was decided to create a comprehensive architectural description. This undertaking faced a number of challenges, including a low general awareness of software modelling and software architecture practices. The approach taken for this project included the definition of a simple, specific, architecture description language. This paper describes the experiences of the project and the ADL created as part of it.

Architecture-Based Testing and System Validation - Workshop Summary

This paper summarizes the workshop on Architecture-Based Testing and System Validation which was organized in conjunction with the 9th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture. The main goal of the workshop was to bring together researchers and practitioners both from the architecture design and software testing community to enable architecture-based software testing.