2.2.2 A Decision Support Framework for the Software Systems Engineer

Abstract

AbstractDecision Support Systems have been developed to aid the decision maker by providing ranked alternatives to consider. The ranking criteria may be resource‐based, schedule‐based or performance‐based. When considering decisions that affect the overall architecture of a software system and the integration of its subsystems/components, the software systems engineer may have some unique challenges when legacy software is part of the system. For the software systems engineer, reengineering legacy systems or integrating legacy systems with new development and/or off‐the‐shelf software are areas where effective software system analysis is critical. When analyzing a software system, a range of system artifacts may be used. These artifacts include a description of the system in natural language, program design language descriptions, flow charts, object diagrams, as well as the system code. All of these artifact types can contain equivalent information at their specific level of abstraction. However, deriving information that is needed from each of these types of artifacts for reengineering or integrating a legacy system may present varying levels of difficulty. For example, analyzing a poorly structured system with little or no design documentation is a particularly challenging problem. Software modelling using an abstract architecture representation as a common description vehicle can “level the playing field” by creating representations of disparate systems at the same level of abstraction. This is of importance to reengineering efforts; it shows promise for supporting and facilitating integration efforts between legacy and other systems. It also allows the definition and development of a framework for a decision support system to aid the software system engineer. This paper is a follow on to previous work by the authors and presents a proposed decision support system framework that makes the use of the technical analyses and techniques presented.