A Framework for the Integration of Functional and Non-functional Analysis of Software Architectures

Abstract

The separation of functional and non-functional analysis of software systems often prevents from considering design solutions that would be evident if an integrated analysis would be possible. Lack of analysis integration is in fact leading software developers to loose precious feedback that would improve the quality of the software product or, even better, would avoid late software inconsistencies with respect to functional or non-functional requirements. In this paper we introduce a framework for software analysis integration. The framework core is XML-based and consists of software models and formal relations among models. The relations help to automatically propagate the analysis feedback among software models. We specify how different analysis methodologies can be integrated in our framework. We also show how the Eclipse platform represents a natural implementation environment for such a framework.