Architectural Reasoning Support for Product-Lines of Self-adaptive Software Systems - A Case Study

Abstract

Software architecture serves as a foundation for the design and development of software systems. Designing an architecture requires extensive analysis and reasoning. The study presented herein focuses on the architectural analysis and reasoning in support of engineering self-adaptive software systems with systematic reuse. Designing self-adaptive software systems with systematic reuse introduces variability along three dimensions; adding more complexity to the architectural analysis and reasoning process. To this end, the study presents an extended Architectural Reasoning Framework with dedicated reasoning support for self-adaptive systems and reuse. To evaluate the proposed framework, we conducted an initial feasibility case study, which concludes that the proposed framework assists the domain architects to increase reusability, reduce fault density, and eliminate differences in skills and experiences among architects, which were our research goals and are decisive factors for a system’s overall quality.