Session:Quality--Paper Preview
From WICSA Conference Wiki
Papers | Positions | Discussions | Results
Encapsulating Quality Attribute Knowledge
Len Bass - Software Engineering Institute
James Ivers - Software Engineering Institute
Mark Klein - Software Engineering Institute
Paulo Merson - Software Engineering Institute
Kurt Wallnau - Software Engineering Institute
This paper presents a technique developed at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) for encapsulating quality attribute knowledge for use in the design and validation of software architectures. A reasoning framework, our encapsulation mechanism, can be used by nonexperts to analyze a specific quality (e.g., performance, modifiability, availability) of a system.
Classifying software architecture quality research
Mario Piattini - University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain)
Coral Calero - University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain)
Hernán Astudillo - Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (Chile)
In this paper, and following other proposals, we present a model for classifying the research works done on the software architecture field. We also present some examples of classification. The final objective is not only to have a global vision about the research in this area but also to know where works is lacking"
Octopus Architecture: A new attempt to achieve reliable OS
Hang Li - Software Engineering Institute, Xidian University
Xi-Yang Liu - Software Engineering Institute, Xidian University
Ping Chen - Software Engineering Institute, Xidian University
In the whole system composed by traditional OS and the applications above,the states are distributed into each layer of the system because of the hierarchy. This increases the difficulties of fault diagnosis and recovery in autonomous computing. In addition, the monitor process that examines the application still belongs to the application. This is awkward because it is the application itself that monitors itself. We propose a new autonomous OS software architecture. By imitating the octopus, the architecture adopts two layers of feedback closed loops and manages the important states of the whole system centrally. The feedback closed loops running on the higher privilege level monitor the ones running on the lower privilege level. Its main innovative features are: i. Treat OS and the applications above as one whole system. ii. The application cannot monitor itself. Processes with higher privilege level monitor processes with lower privilege level.
Quality-Driven Architecture Model Transformation
Mari Matinlassi - VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
In order to achieve productive software development with high quality software products, skilled people and effective tools are needed. The concept of quality-driven software architecture model transformation (QAMT) is concerned with the latter, tools. The ultimate goal of QAMT is to multiply the productivity of individual software modellers with advanced modelling tools. Advanced modelling tools can be used to do most of the work on behalf of the developer. However, QAMT is not a tool, but rather a technique for transforming architecture. Transforming architectural models to new models according to defined quality requirements (i.e. manual QAMT) is likely to be a common routine for developers in the software industry. In an ideal state, QAMT would be fully automated in a tool, guiding the software (PF) architect in his/her work, thus making the work faster and easier.
Providing Support for Safe Software Architecture Transformations
Olivier Barais - Projet Jacquard, INRIA/LIFL
Julia Lawall - DIKU, University of Copenhagen
Anne-Françoise Le Meur - Projet Jacquard, INRIA/LIFL
Laurence Duchien - Projet Jacquard, INRIA/LIFL
Software architectures must frequently evolve to cope with changing requirements, which can imply integrating new concerns. Unfortunately, existing architecture description languages provide little or no support for this kind of evolution. A software architect must modify the architecture manually, which risks introducing inconsistencies.
In previous work, we have proposed the TranSAT framework, which provides language constructs for expressing patterns that describe how to integrate new concerns into a software architecture. In this paper, we present the safety guarantees provided by TranSAT. TranSAT statically verifies that any transformations performed by a pattern respect the structural constraints of the underlying component model, and dynamically verifies that the resulting behavior is deadlock-free. As a result of the static verifications, patterns can be provided as a commodity, where a software architect can have confidence in the safety of a pattern obtained from a third-party developer. The dynamic verifications ensure that the pattern is compatible with the chosen integration site in the software architecture. Support is provided for rolling back to a stable state if the dynamic verification fails.
Software Architecture Reliability Analysis using Failure Scenarios
Bedir Tekinerdogan - University of Twente
Hasan Sözer - University of Twente
Mehmet Aksit - University of Twente
We propose a Software Architecture Reliability Analysis (SARA) approach that benefits from both reliability engineering and scenario-based software architecture analysis to provide an early reliability analysis of the software architecture. SARA makes use of failure scenarios that are prioritized with respect to the user-perception in order to provide a severity analysis for the software architecture and the individual components."
Change Propagation for Assessing Design Quality of Software Architectures
Israr Pasha Shaik - West Virginia University
Walid Abdelmoez - West Virginia University
Rajesh Gunnalan - West Virginia University
Mark Shereshevsky - West Virginia University
Amir Zeid - West Virginia University
Hany Ammar - West Virginia University
The study of software architectures is gaining importance due to its role in various aspects of software engineering such as product line engineering, component based software engineering and other emerging paradigms. With the increasing emphasis on design patterns, the traditional practice of ad-hoc software construction is slowly shifting towards pattern-oriented development. Various architectural attributes like error propagation, change propagation, and requirements propagation, provide a wealth of information about software architectures. In this paper, we show that change propagation probability (CP) is helpful and effective in assessing the design quality of software architectures. We study two different architectures (one that employs patterns versus one that does not) for the same application. We also analyze and compare change propagation metric with respect to other coupling-based metrics.
