Software Architecture Evaluation Research Articles

SDMF: Systematic Decision-making Framework for Evaluation of Software Architecture

The software architectural decisions are crucial and critical to the success of a software project life cycle. The set of relevant design decisions affects the quality of the software architecture. In this paper, a systematic decision-making framework is proposed by considering management and organizational factors and design goals/parameters that affect software architecture (SA) and integrating it with the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to evaluate and select the quality software architecture. An illustrative case study is also mentioned to show the applicability of the proposed framework. The framework suggested in the paper should enable an architect and other key stakeholders of the software architecture to efficiently identify, evaluate and select the software architecture.

Combined architectural framework for the selection of architectures using ATAM, FAHP and CBAM

Software architecture is the framework for all the technical decisions and as such has a tremendous impact on product cost and quality. It is always cost-effective to evaluate software quality as early as possible in the system development life cycle. Software architecture should be designed such that it reflects business goals and quality attributes QAs of the system for which the architecture is being designed, and architecture evaluation methods enable us to evaluate how well they are reflected in the designed architecture. The widely used architecture evaluation methods are the architectural trade-off analysis method ATAM and the cost benefit analysis method CBAM. ATAM assists architects in identifying trade-offs among QAs and identifying risks when they design architecture. CBAM helps architects select architectures that are optimal for a given requirement during its evolution by calculating economical trade-offs based on the benefits and costs. Owing to the uncertainty in the judgement for quality attributes in the conventional AHP used in ATAM, a fuzzy-based quantitative evaluation framework for accessing quality attributes is developed to facilitate the selection of the underlying architectures. This software architecture evaluation framework addresses the competing objectives of cost minimisation and quality maximisation between different architectural options.

Combined architectural framework for the selection of architectures using ATAM, FAHP and CBAM

Software architecture is the framework for all the technical decisions and as such has a tremendous impact on product cost and quality. It is always cost-effective to evaluate software quality as early as possible in the system development life cycle. Software architecture should be designed such that it reflects business goals and quality attributes (QAs) of the system for which the architecture is being designed, and architecture evaluation methods enable us to evaluate how well they are reflected in the designed architecture. The widely used architecture evaluation methods are the architectural trade-off analysis method (ATAM) and the cost benefit analysis method (CBAM). ATAM assists architects in identifying trade-offs among QAs and identifying risks when they design architecture. CBAM helps architects select architectures that are optimal for a given requirement during its evolution by calculating economical trade-offs based on the benefits and costs. Owing to the uncertainty in the judgement for quality attributes in the conventional AHP used in ATAM, a fuzzy-based quantitative evaluation framework for accessing quality attributes is developed to facilitate the selection of the underlying architectures. This software architecture evaluation framework addresses the competing objectives of cost minimisation and quality maximisation between different architectural options.

Software Architecture Evaluation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Fuzzy Based Controllers – A Survey

Software Architecture Evaluation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Fuzzy Based Controllers – A Survey

FUZZY MULTICRITERIA DECISION MAKING USING FUZZY TOPSIS FOR THE SELECTION OF SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE

Software architecture is the framework for all the technical decisions and as such has the tremendous impact on product cost and quality. Choosing a software architecture for any system remains a complex task, as existing software architecture evaluation methods fail to quantitatively analyze them. Software architecture evaluation framework addresses the competing objectives of cost minimization and quality maximization between different architectural options. Due to the uncertainty in the judgment for quality attributes, fuzzy based quantitative evaluation framework for accessing quality attributes is developed to facilitate the selection of the underlying architectures. Fuzzy TOPSIS is one of the sensitive methods of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) that defines the positive ideal solution and negative ideal solution to maximize the benefit criteria and minimize the cost criteria. The various decision makers’ quality requirements need to be considered collectively to describe the quality requirements of the envisioned system which forms the basis for the comparison and selection criteria. In this paper, a multi criteria decision making approach for architecture selection under partial or incomplete information (uncertainty) is presented and validated using a suitable case study.

Presentation of an executable model for evaluation of software architecture using blackboard technique and formal models

Considering the promotion and complexities of software systems and need to services for repair and updating, success of this system is extremely dependent to its architecture and design. Architectural techniques due to being used by the architectures frequently have specified effect on qualitative characteristics. If this effect is quantitative and measurable for each technique will enable the architect to have more care and convenience for evaluation of design and architectural designs. In this study, at first to show the structure and behavior of software architecture using blackboard technique, component diagram and unified modeling language activity diagram together with required data in relation to nonfunctional needs as stereotypes and labels were used. Later, upon converting the actual model to the formal model, requirements for system performance evaluation on the formal model is provided. Upon analyzing the results, it is observed that the offered method can evaluate the performance of software architecture based on blackboard technique at the design age.

Software Architecture and Detailed Design Evaluation

Software design and estimation play the key role for software development process. Different methods are used for architecture design and detailed design evaluation. For architectural design stage a technique that allows selecting and evaluating suite of architectural patterns is proposed. It allows us to consistently evaluate the impact of specific patterns to software characteristics with a given functionality. Also the criterion of efficiency metric is proposed which helps us to evaluate architectural patterns for specified software. During detailed design stage we are interested in the selection of the optimal metric suits which takes into account the characteristics of required system. The proposed technique contains a number a steps where at each step a specific criterion should be used to make a selection from the available metric suites. In the end we can perform the selected metric suite improvement.

ADTEM-Architecture Design Testability Evaluation Model to Assess Software Architecture Based on Testability Metrics

Architectural design is a crucial issue in software engineering. It makes testing more effective as it contribute to carry out the testing in an early stage of the software development. To improve software testability, the software architect should consider different testability metrics while building the software architecture. The main objective of this research is to conduct an early assessment of the software architecture for the purpose of its improvement in order to make the testing process more effective. In this paper, an evaluation model to assess software architecture (Architecture Design Testability Evaluation Model (ADTEM)) is presented. ADTEM is based on two different testability metrics: cohesion and coupling. ADTEM consists of two phases: software architecture evaluation phase, and component evaluation phase. In each phase, a fuzzy inference system is used to perform the evaluation process based on cohesion and coupling testing metrics. The model is validated by using a case study: Elders Monitoring System. The experimental results show that ADTEM is efficient and gave a considerable improvement to the software testability process.

Lumping and reversed processes in cooperating automata

Performance evaluation of computer software or hardware architectures may rely on the analysis of a complex stochastic model whose specification is usually given in terms of a high level formalism such as queueing networks, stochastic Petri nets, stochastic automata or Markovian process algebras. Compositionality is a key-feature of many of these formalisms and allows the modeller to combine several (simple) components to form a complex architecture. However, although these formalisms lead to relative compact specifications of possibly complex models, the derivation of the performance indices may be computationally very time and space consuming since the set of possible states of the model tends to grow exponentially (or even faster) with the number of components. In this paper we focus on models with underlying continuous time Markov chains (CTMCs) and we introduce a notion of typed lumpability, which gives sufficient conditions under which a lumping of the process can be derived, allowing the exact computation of marginal stationary probabilities of the cooperating components. The peculiarity of our method relies on the fact that lumping is applied at the component-level rather than to the CTMC underlying the joint process, thus reducing both the memory requirements and the computational cost of the subsequent solution of the model. Moreover, we investigate the properties of the lumping of reversed automata and we prove that, if these are reversible, a conditional product-form solution of their cooperation with other non-blocking automata can be derived. Although conditional product-forms have been previously investigated by other authors with the aim of approximating non-product-form models, the contribution of this paper consists in giving sufficient conditions for this approach to yield exact results and providing examples to support the modeller’s intuition.

Validating a model-driven software architecture evaluation and improvement method: A family of experiments

ContextSoftware architectures should be evaluated during the early stages of software development in order to verify whether the non-functional requirements (NFRs) of the product can be fulfilled. This activity is even more crucial in software product line (SPL) development, since it is also necessary to identify whether the NFRs of a particular product can be achieved by exercising the variation mechanisms provided by the product line architecture or whether additional transformations are required. These issues have motivated us to propose QuaDAI, a method for the derivation, evaluation and improvement of software architectures in model-driven SPL development. ObjectiveWe present in this paper the results of a family of four experiments carried out to empirically validate the evaluation and improvement strategy of QuaDAI. MethodThe family of experiments was carried out by 92 participants: Computer Science Master’s and undergraduate students from Spain and Italy. The goal was to compare the effectiveness, efficiency, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and intention to use with regard to participants using the evaluation and improvement strategy of QuaDAI as opposed to the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM). ResultsThe main result was that the participants produced their best results when applying QuaDAI, signifying that the participants obtained architectures with better values for the NFRs faster, and that they found the method easier to use, more useful and more likely to be used. The results of the meta-analysis carried out to aggregate the results obtained in the individual experiments also confirmed these results. ConclusionsThe results support the hypothesis that QuaDAI would achieve better results than ATAM in the experiments and that QuaDAI can be considered as a promising approach with which to perform architectural evaluations that occur after the product architecture derivation in model-driven SPL development processes when carried out by novice software evaluators.

Modeling and simulation of software architecture in discrete event system specification for quality evaluation

Software quality is an important issue in software engineering. The evaluation of software architecture is crucial to achieve quality scenarios, which reduces development and maintenance costs. This work presents a discrete event simulation environment for the software architecture assessment considering both functional and quality aspects. Discrete event system specification (DEVS) formalism and the underlying framework are used to specify the simulation elements. DEVS is based on the system theory and follows the engineering and object-oriented fundamentals to construct complex dynamic systems. The proposed environment is built in a modular and hierarchical way that provides scalability and reusability advantages. Although the proposal is focused on three quality attributes and a few metrics, this approach enables the definition of new elements and metrics related to other quality attributes that can be visible at runtime. A traditional architecture illustrates the proposal, where preliminary computational experiments for this real software system and concrete quality scenarios demonstrate the feasibility of the integrated simulation environment for the software architecture evaluation. In addition, a discussion shows how the results could help architects make design decisions to improve software quality during development.

Enterprise Information Systems Architecture—Analysis and Evaluation

Numerous software architecture proposals are available to industrial information engineers in developing their enterprise information systems. While those proposals and corresponding methodologies are helpful to engineers in determining appropriate architecture, the systematic methods for the evaluation of software architecture are scarce. To select appropriate software architecture from various alternatives appropriately, a scenario-based method has been proposed to assess how software architecture affects the fulfillment of business requirements. The empirical evaluation on the selection of a supply chain software tool has shown that the developed method offers remarkable insights of software development and can be incorporated into the industrial informatics practice of an organization with a moderate cost.

Provide a Method for Evaluation of Software Architecture using Ontology

Software architecture is an undeniable role in the software life cycle. Some criteria should be noted at the time of analysis and evaluation of software architecture including quality characteristics, risks and non-risks, architectural decisions or tactics. Software architecture evaluation involves evaluating different options for architectural decisions, and combining them in order to achieve the desired quality characteristics. Most of the architectural techniques such as scenario-based architectural analysis is based on compromise to analyze how architectural decisions and their possible combinations to achieve the quality characteristics is based on the stages and sequence of steps performed only on the inputs and outputs. In this paper, a new method for supporting the software architecture evaluation is proposed. In this method we clarify the circumstance of the analysis steps during the evaluation which depends on the experiences and knowledge. In addition, reusing and sharing of architectural knowledge is enforced and therefore two types of anthologies have been offered that the attribute-based architectural styles have significant roles in construction of them. Finally, to show the effectiveness of the proposed method in different conditions, two sample surveys have been considered and analyzed. The simulation results on prototype data show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Evaluation of software architecture using fuzzy colored Petri nets

Article history: Received September 29, 2012 Received in revised format 19 November 2012 Accepted 29 November 2012 Available online December 1 2012 Software Architecture (SA) is one of the most important artifacts for life cycle of a software system because it incorporates some important decisions and principles for the system development. On the other hand, developing the systems based on uncertain and ambiguous requirement has been increased, significantly. Therefore, there have been significant attentions on SA requirements. In this paper, we present a new method for evaluation of performance characteristics based on a use case, response time, and queue length of SA. Since there are some ambiguities associated with considered systems, we use the idea of Fuzzy UML (F-UML) diagrams. In addition, these diagrams have been enriched with performance annotations using proposed Fuzzy-SPT sub profile, the extended version of SPT profile proposed by OMG. Then, these diagrams are mapped into an executable model based on Fuzzy Colored Petri Nets (FCPN) and finally the performance metrics are calculated using the proposed algorithms. We have implemented CPN-Tools for creating and evaluating the FCPN model. © 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evaluation of software architecture using fuzzy color Petri net

Evaluation of software architecture using fuzzy color Petri net

The Link between Dependency and Cochange: Empirical Evidence

We investigate the relationship between class dependency and change propagation (cochange) in software written in Java. On the one hand, we find a strong correlation between dependency and cochange. Furthermore, we provide empirical evidence for the propagation of change along paths of dependency. These findings support the often alleged role of dependencies as propagators of change. On the other hand, we find that approximately half of all dependencies are never involved in cochanges and that the vast majority of cochanges pertain to only a small percentage of dependencies. This means that inferring the cochange characteristics of a software architecture solely from its dependency structure results in a severely distorted approximation of cochange characteristics. Any metric which uses dependencies alone to pass judgment on the evolvability of a piece of Java software is thus unreliable. As a consequence, we suggest to always take both the change characteristics and the dependency structure into account when evaluating software architecture.

Software Architecture Evaluation Methods A Survey

Software architectural evaluation becomes a familiar practice in software engineering community for developing quality software. Architectural evaluation reduces software development effort and costs, and enhances the quality of the software by verifying the addressability of quality requirements and identifying potential risks and it provides assurance to developers that their chosen architecture will meet both functional and non-functional quality requirements. This paper presents a discussion on different software architectural evaluation methods and techniques and concentrates on summarizing the importance of the different early and late evaluation methods, similarities and difference between them, their applicability, strengths and weaknesses.

Evaluating software architecture using fuzzy formal models

Article history: Received June 2, 2011 Received in Revised form October, 19, 2011 Accepted 8 January 2012 Available online 11 January 2012 Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been recognized as one of the most popular techniques to describe static and dynamic aspects of software systems. One of the primary issues in designing software packages is the existence of uncertainty associated with such models. Fuzzy-UML to describe software architecture has both static and dynamic perspective, simultaneously. The evaluation of software architecture design phase initiates always help us find some additional requirements, which helps reduce cost of design. In this paper, we use a fuzzy data model to describe the static aspects of software architecture and the fuzzy sequence diagram to illustrate the dynamic aspects of software architecture. We also transform these diagrams into Petri Nets and evaluate reliability of the architecture. The web-based hotel reservation system for further explanation has been studied. © 2012 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

A framework for groupware‐supported software architecture evaluation process in global software development

SUMMARYA software architecture evaluation process requires a large number of stakeholders to be collocated for evaluation sessions. Given an increasing trend to using globally distributed software development teams, organizations are likely to be discouraged from introducing disciplined software architecture evaluation practices that require collocated stakeholders. To address this issue, we propose that a software architecture evaluation can be carried out using suitable groupware systems. In this paper, we present a framework for supporting the software architecture evaluation process using a groupware system. The framework highlights the changes that are required in the existing software architecture evaluation methods. We provide an illustrated example of modeling and mapping the activities of the presented process on electronic workspaces provided by a groupware system. We also identify some of the features that a groupware system should provide to successfully support the process. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A simple method for deriving LQN-models from software-models represented as UML diagrams

The evaluation and performance analysis of software architecture at the design level increases the quality of the software and also reduces the cost of rework during the later stages of the product. The derivation of performance results of a software product, during the early stages of the software life cycle can be achieved by quantitatively evaluating the software performance model. There has been lot of research identifying the methods of evaluating software (Booch, 2001). The evaluation process starts by analyzing the performance model which is derived from the software model annotated with suitable usage profiles. This paper provides a simple approach to convert the software models represented as Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams using the profile for Schedulability, Performance and Time specifications (SPT) into Layered Queuing Network (LQN) performance models. The paper mainly illustrates the conversion process from UML to LQN, and also substantiates the method by a simple example.