Quality Of Software Architectures Models And Architectures

Models are used in all kinds of engineering disciplines to abstract from the various details of the modelled entity in order to focus on a speci?c aspect. Like a blueprint in civil engineering, a software architecture providesan abstraction from the full software system’s complexity. It allows software designers to get an overview on the system underdevelopmentandtoanalyzeitsproperties.Inthissense,modelsarethefoundation needed for software development to become a true engineering discipline. Especially when reasoning on a software system’s extra-functional properties, its software architecture carries the necessary information for early, design-time analyses. These analyses take the software architecture as input and can be used to direct the design process by allowing a systematic evaluation of different design alternatives. For example, they can be used to cancel out decisions which would lead to architecture - signs whose implementation would not comply with extra-functionalrequirements like performance or reliability constraints. Besides such quality attributes directly visible to the end user, internal quality attributes, e.g., maintainability, also highly depend on the system’s architecture. In addition to the above-mentioned technical aspects of software architecture m- els, non-technical aspects, especially project management-related activities, require an explicit software architecture model. The models are used as input for cost esti- tions, time-, deadline-, and resource planning for the development teams. They serve the project management activities of planning, executing, and controlling, which are necessary to deliver high-quality software systems in time and within the budget.

This book presents a systematic model-based approach for software architecture according to three complementary viewpoints: structure, behavior, and execution. It covers a unified modeling approach and consolidates theory and practice with well-established learning outcomes. The authors cover the fundamentals of software architecture description and presents SysADL, a specialization of the OMG Standard Systems Modeling Language (SysML) with the aim of bringing together the expressive power of an Architecture Description Language (ADL) with a standard notation, widely accepted by industry and compliant with the ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 Standard on Architecture Description in Systems and Software Engineering. The book is clearly structured in four parts: The first part focuses on the fundamentals of software architecture, exploring the concepts and constructs for modeling software architecture from differing viewpoints. Each chapter covers a specific viewpoint illustrated with examples of a real system. The second part focuses on how to design software architecture for achieving quality attributes. Each chapter covers a specific quality attribute and presents well-defined approaches to achieve it. Each architectural case study is illustrated with different examples drawn from a real-life system. The third part shows readers how to apply software architecture style to design architectures that meet the quality attributes. Each chapter covers a specific architectural style and gives insights on how to describe substyles. Each style is illustrated by variants and examples of a real-life system. The fourth part presents how to textually represent software architecture models to complement visual notation, including different examples. Software Architecture in Action is designed for teaching the required modeling techniques to both undergraduate and graduate students, giving them the practical techniques and tools needed to design the architecture of software-intensive systems. Similarly, this book will appeal to software development architects, designers, programmers and project managers too.

Quality attributes, such as performance or reliability, are crucial for the success of a software system and largely influenced by the software architecture. Their quantitative prediction supports systematic, goal-oriented software design and forms a base of an engineering approach to software design. This thesis proposes a method and tool to automatically improve component-based software architecture (CBA) models based on such quantitative quality prediction techniques.

Models are used in all kinds of engineering disciplines to abstract from the various details of the modelled entity in order to focus on a speci?c aspect. Like a blueprint in civil engineering, a software architecture providesan abstraction from the full software system’s complexity. It allows software designers to get an overview on the system underdevelopmentandtoanalyzeitsproperties.Inthissense,modelsarethefoundation needed for software development to become a true engineering discipline. Especially when reasoning on a software system’s extra-functional properties, its software architecture carries the necessary information for early, design-time analyses. These analyses take the software architecture as input and can be used to direct the design process by allowing a systematic evaluation of different design alternatives. For example, they can be used to cancel out decisions which would lead to architecture - signs whose implementation would not comply with extra-functionalrequirements like performance or reliability constraints. Besides such quality attributes directly visible to the end user, internal quality attributes, e.g., maintainability, also highly depend on the system’s architecture. In addition to the above-mentioned technical aspects of software architecture m- els, non-technical aspects, especially project management-related activities, require an explicit software architecture model. The models are used as input for cost esti- tions, time-, deadline-, and resource planning for the development teams. They serve the project management activities of planning, executing, and controlling, which are necessary to deliver high-quality software systems in time and within the budget.

This book constitutes the joint refereed proceedings of two colocated events: the First International Conference on the Quality of Software Architectures (QoSA 2005) and the Second International Workshop on Software Quality (SOQUA 2005) held in Erfurt, Germany, in September 2005. The 18 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. For QoSA 2005 only 12 papers - of the 31 submitted - were accepted for presentation; they are concerned with research and experiences that investigate the influence a specific software architecture has on software quality aspects. The papers are organized in topical sections on software architecture evaluation, formal approaches to model-driven QoS-handling, modelling QoS in software architectures, software architectures applied, architectural design for QoS, and model-driven software reliability estimation. The 6 papers accepted for SOQUA 2005 - from 17 submissions - mainly focus on quality assurance and on software testing. They are organized in topical sections on test case selection, model-based testing, unit testing, and performance testing.

A new, quantitative architecture simulation approach to software design that circumvents costly testing cycles by modeling quality of service in early design states. Too often, software designers lack an understanding of the effect of design decisions on such quality attributes as performance and reliability. This necessitates costly trial-and-error testing cycles, delaying or complicating rollout. This book presents a new, quantitative architecture simulation approach to software design, which allows software engineers to model quality of service in early design stages. It presents the first simulator for software architectures, Palladio, and shows students and professionals how to model reusable, parametrized components and configured, deployed systems in order to analyze service attributes. The text details the key concepts of Palladio's domain-specific modeling language for software architecture quality and presents the corresponding development stage. It describes how quality information can be used to calibrate architecture models from which detailed simulation models are automatically derived for quality predictions. Readers will learn how to approach systematically questions about scalability, hardware resources, and efficiency. The text features a running example to illustrate tasks and methods as well as three case studies from industry. Each chapter ends with exercises, suggestions for further reading, and “takeaways” that summarize the key points of the chapter. The simulator can be downloaded from a companion website, which offers additional material. The book can be used in graduate courses on software architecture, quality engineering, or performance engineering. It will also be an essential resource for software architects and software engineers and for practitioners who want to apply Palladio in industrial settings.

Researchers and professionals will find in this text the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Quality of Software Architectures, QoSA 2007, held in Medford, MA, USA, in 2007. It was mounted in conjunction with the 10th International ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on Component-Based Software Engineering, CBSE 2007. The 13 revised full papers presented together with one keynote lecture were carefully reviewed and selected from 42 submissions.

System Quality and Software Architecture collects state-of-the-art knowledge on how to intertwine software quality requirements with software architecture and how quality attributes are exhibited by the architecture of the system. Contributions from leading researchers and industry evangelists detail the techniques required to achieve quality management in software architecting, and the best way to apply these techniques effectively in various application domains (especially in cloud, mobile and ultra-large-scale/internet-scale architecture) Taken together, these approaches show how to assess the value of total quality management in a software development process, with an emphasis on architecture. The book explains how to improve system quality with focus on attributes such as usability, maintainability, flexibility, reliability, reusability, agility, interoperability, performance, and more. It discusses the importance of clear requirements, describes patterns and tradeoffs that can influence quality, and metrics for quality assessment and overall system analysis. The last section of the book leverages practical experience and evidence to look ahead at the challenges faced by organizations in capturing and realizing quality requirements, and explores the basis of future work in this area. Explains how design decisions and method selection influence overall system quality, and lessons learned from theories and frameworks on architectural quality Shows how to align enterprise, system, and software architecture for total quality Includes case studies, experiments, empirical validation, and systematic comparisons with other approaches already in practice.