Analysis of software architectures in high and low volume electronic systems, industrial experience report

Abstract

This paper reported about work in progress. One of the main findings is that the Soni ideas, although originated within the Siemens company, are also useful within Philips. We came to similar conclusions as Soni et. al. [1] and particularly we found it difficult to pinpoint the conceptual architecture. Explicit relationships between the various architectures were not always made clear. The most clear is the relationship between module and code architectures. This determined often the relationships between the module and execution architectures, but in general they are difficult to find and in many cases implicit. The similarities and differences among the various systems are surprising. In particular, there appears to be no standard way of representing the various architectures. For each of the individual cases the work has resulted in a much better understanding of the software architectures. In the past these architectures, were either implicit, hidden and scattered over many documents, or only known by the experts. By explicitly extracting them and modelling them from various viewpoints it has become easier to share the relevant architectural knowledge with the non-SW architects (HW-Architects, System Architects, Product Managers, etc.) in the organisation.