Roshanak Roshandel
André Van Der Hoek
Marija Mikic-Rakic
Abstract
As with any other artifact produced as part of the software life cycle, software architectures evolve and this evolution must be managed. One approach to doing so would be to apply any of a host of existing configuration management systems, which have long been used successfully at the level of source code. Unfortunately, such an approach leads to many problems that prevent effective management of architectural evolution. To overcome these problems, we have developed an alternative approach centered on the use of an integrated architectural and configuration management system model. Because the system model combines architectural and configuration management concepts in a single representation, it has the distinct benefit that all architectural changes can be precisely captured and clearly related to each other---both at the fine-grained level of individual architectural elements and at the coarse-grained level of architectural configurations. To support the use of the system model, we have developed Mae, an architectural evolution environment through which users can specify architectures in a traditional manner, manage the evolution of the architectures using a check-out/check-in mechanism that tracks all changes, select a specific architectural configuration, and analyze the consistency of a selected configuration. We demonstrate the benefits of our approach by showing how the system model and its accompanying environment were used in the context of several representative projects.
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Index Terms
- Mae---a system model and environment for managing architectural evolution
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Reviews
Michael G. Murphy
This paper discusses how to manage software architecture evolution. Rather than using existing configuration management systems, which are primarily focused at the source code level, the authors advocate an alternative approach, centered on a model that integrates architectural and configuration management concepts. A benefit of this is that all architectural changes can be captured and related, both at the fine level of individual elements, and at the coarse level of architectural configurations. Mae (an anthropomorphic acronym for managing architectural evolution) is an architectural evolution environment for specifying architectures, managing their evolution via a check-out/check-in mechanism, selecting a specific configuration, and analyzing consistency. The potential for this approach, with respect to managing software product lines, is very significant. The paper is well organized, well written, and likely to be of interest to software architects, software engineering managers, and software engineering educators. There is a motivational introduction, followed by sections covering background information; a motivating example; the architectural system model for Mae; implementation of the architectural evolution environment for Mae; and evaluation of the usability, scalability, and applicability of Mae in three specific application domains. Effective use of figures and tables enhance the presentation, and effectively illustrate details. The paper ends with a discussion of related work, and a conclusion. An extensive bibliography is also provided. Depending on the interests of the reader, the paper may be skimmed, or read in depth. Online Computing Reviews Service
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