Co-evolution of component-based architecture-model and object-oriented source code

Abstract

With the evolution of software systems, architecture model and system implementation tend to drift apart. While suitable architecture model supports architects and developers in better understanding the software system, the missing synchronization to source code of the underlying implementation can result in outdated architecture models. In this paper, we address two challenges in today's architecture-driven software development: architecture drift and architecture erosion. We introduce a co-evolution approach of a component-based architecture model and object-oriented source code. Our novel approach supports software architects and software developers by introducing a tight and continuous synchronization of a component-based architecture model and the source code. To get architecture evolution under control, our co-evolution approach maps architecture changes done via the source code to the architecture model and vice versa. This explicit support of changes and refactorings at architecture-level prevents unintended architecture violations. In order to evaluate our approach, we plan different case studies whose layout is designed in the evaluation section.