Software Architecture Process Research Articles

A Process for Monitoring the Impact of Architecture Principles on Sustainability: An Industrial Case Study

Architecture principles affect a software system holistically. Given their alignment with a business strategy, they should be incorporated within the validation process covering aspects of sustainability. However, current research discusses the influence of architecture principles on sustainability in a limited context. Our objective was to introduce a reusable process for monitoring and evaluating the impact of architecture principles on sustainability from a software architecture perspective. We sought to demonstrate the application of such a process in professional practice. A qualitative case study was conducted in the context of a Dutch airport management company. Data collection involved a case analysis and the execution of two rounds of expert interviews. We (i) identified a set of case-related key performance indicators, (ii) utilized commonly accepted measurement tools, and (iii) employed graphical representations in the form of spider charts to monitor the sustainability impacts. The real-world observations were evaluated through a concluding focus group. Our findings indicated that architecture principles were a feasible mechanism with which to address sustainability across all different architecture layers within the enterprise. The experts considered the sustainability analysis valuable in guiding the software architecture process towards sustainability. With the emphasis on principles, we facilitate industry adoption by embedding sustainability in existing mechanisms.

Distributed bandwidth selection approach for cooperative peer to peer multi-cloud platform

Network function virtualization (NFV) is a well-accepted software-defined network (SDN) architecture concept. NFV is severally used in cloud platform to enhance the utilization of available network resources. The concept behind NFV is a design of software process architecture with a bunch of collaborative resource utilization functions. The progression of platform providers builds a communication service plan with the help of virtual machines. We propose biogeography-based optimization (BBO) technique in order to enrich virtual network functions (VNFs) to utilize available bandwidth resource in an energy-efficient and cost-effective manner. The cooperative bandwidth sharing approach using BBO reduces delay mean at the time of supervision the impending requests in a multi-cloud environment. Experimental results validate that the utilization of available bandwidth has increased using the proposed scheme with respect to the single user-dedicated resource allocation and multi-user dedicated resource allocation. Delay means, as well as subscription cost, has reduced compared to the existing methods. The correctness of the investigational outcome has been established using an experimental setup along with the proposed algorithm.

Developing a novel mobile banking software process architecture by deploying etom framework

Developing a novel mobile banking software process architecture by deploying etom framework

Activity-Based Software Process Lines Tailoring

Software process definition requires choosing the process elements that appropriately fulfil the tailoring requirements, such as to prevent risks or to satisfy quality goals. The selection of appropriate process elements is usually done manually, making this process complex, time-consuming and error-prone. Our main objective is to define a systematic approach to tailor software process and a support tool to simplify and to support the tailoring process by improving the selection process of reusable process elements. We developed a systematic approach to tailor software process based on software process architectures and lines. This approach selects the process elements that appropriately match the tailoring requirements. A web tool was developed to support the use of the proposed approach. We concluded that the approach aids process engineer to make decisions for selecting a set of process elements suitable to the tailoring requirements and to the project context.

The Design of Contactless IC Card Reader in ETC

The device has the 13.56MHz radio frequency identification (RFID) reader feature, and it can be used in the reading and writing in the aspect with purchase secure access module (PSAM) card, embedded secure access module (ESAM) card and dual-interface user card in the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) industry. This article focuses on the design of the antenna and external matching circuit of the contactless IC card reader, lists software architecture and communication process, and obtains the optimum matching circuit through analyzing the data got from Agilent vector network analyzer

A Framework of Tools for Managing Software Architecture Knowledge

Software architecture (SA) process consists of several activities, which involve complex knowledge intensive process. The knowledge produced and consumed during this process needs to be shared and reused among different stakeholders, and across different life-cycle phases. Therefore, software architecture knowledge needs to be managed for improving organization architecture capabilities. It is the way knowledge management (KM) plays an important role in the SA process. This paper utilized SA evaluation to analyze SA and used Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM) to support a disciplined architecture process. With this approach, it gives support to provide or manage the knowledge required or generated during the SA process. The effective tool support is needed and become important to capture and manage architectural knowledge (AK) consumed or generated during SA process. If not captured and managed, this critical knowledge is implicitly embedded in the architecture, become tacit knowledge which erodes as personnel on the project change. To cover these issues, this paper developed a framework of tools for managing SA knowledge. The tool prototype designing and implementing a web-based knowledge management system (KMS), which is offer a hybrid architectural KM approach.

An exploratory study of architectural effects on requirements decisions

The question of the “manner in which an existing software architecture affects requirements decision-making” is considered important in the research community; however, to our knowledge, this issue has not been scientifically explored. We do not know, for example, the characteristics of such architectural effects. This paper describes an exploratory study on this question. Specific types of architectural effects on requirements decisions are identified, as are different aspects of the architecture together with the extent of their effects. This paper gives quantitative measures and qualitative interpretation of the findings. The understanding gained from this study has several implications in the areas of: project planning and risk management, requirements engineering (RE) and software architecture (SA) technology, architecture evolution, tighter integration of RE and SA processes, and middleware in architectures. Furthermore, we describe several new hypotheses that have emerged from this study, that provide grounds for future empirical work. This study involved six RE teams (of university students), whose task was to elicit new requirements for upgrading a pre-existing banking software infrastructure. The data collected was based on a new meta-model for requirements decisions, which is a bi-product of this study.

A classification and comparison of model checking software architecture techniques

Software architecture specifications are used for many different purposes, such as documenting architectural decisions, predicting architectural qualities before the system is implemented, and guiding the design and coding process. In these contexts, assessing the architectural model as early as possible becomes a relevant challenge. Various analysis techniques have been proposed for testing, model checking, and evaluating performance based on architectural models. Among them, model checking is an exhaustive and automatic verification technique, used to verify whether an architectural specification conforms to expected properties. While model checking is being extensively applied to software architectures, little work has been done to comprehensively enumerate and classify these different techniques. The goal of this paper is to investigate the state-of-the-art in model checking software architectures. For this purpose, we first define the main activities in a model checking software architecture process. Then, we define a classification and comparison framework and compare model checking software architecture techniques according to it.

Modeling and simulating software acquisition process architectures

In this paper, we describe our efforts to support the modeling and simulation of processes associated with software system acquisition activities. Software acquisition is generally a multi-organization endeavor concerned with the funding, management, engineering, system integration, deployment and long-term support of large software systems. We first describe our approach supporting the modeling and simulation of software acquisition processes using a software process architecture (SPA). We then introduce how we support the distribution, concurrent execution and interoperation of multiple software process simulations using the high-level architecture (HLA) and run-time infrastructure (RTI) to address the complexity of software acquisition process architectures. To illustrate this, we provide examples from the design and prototyping of a Web-based environment that supports the modeling and simulation of acquisition process architectures. This environment thus serves as a new kind of software process test-bed that can demonstrate and support experiments incorporating multiple software process simulation systems that interoperate in a distributed and concurrent manner across a network.

Seeding, Evolutionary Growth and Reseeding: Constructing, Capturing and Evolving Knowledge in Domain-Oriented Design Environments

We live in a world characterized by evolution—that is, by ongoing processes of development, formation, and growth in both natural and human-created systems. Biology tells us that complex, natural systems are not created all at once but must instead evolve over time. We are becoming increasingly aware that evolutionary processes are ubiquitous and critical for technological innovations as well. This is particularly true for complex software systems because these systems do not necessarily exist in a technological context alone but instead are embedded within dynamic human organizations. The Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D) at the University of Colorado has been involved in research on software design and other design domains for more than a decade. We understand software design as an evolutionary process in which system requirements and functionality are determined through an iterative process of collaboration among multiple stakeholders, rather than being completely specified before system development occurs. Our research focuses on the following claims about software systems embedded within dynamic human organizations: (1) they must evolve because they cannot be completely designed prior to use, (2) they must evolve to some extent at the hands of the users, and (3) they must be designed for evolution. Our theoretical work builds upon our existing knowledge of design processes and focuses on a software process model and architecture specifically for systems that must evolve. Our theories are instantiated and assessed through the development and evolution of domain-oriented design environments (DODEs)—software systems that support design activities within particular domains and that are built specifically to evolve.