Abstract. Different organizations or organizational units are likely to store and maintain different types of information about their software architectures. This inhibits effective management of architectural knowledge. We experimented with a model of architectural knowledge to characterize the use of architectural knowledge in four different organizations. Based on this experimentation we identified four perspectives on architectural knowledge management, and additionally adjusted the model to better align theory with practice. The refined model defines a minimal set of concepts with supposedly complete coverage of the architectural knowledge domain. Because of the minimalistic aspect of the model, we refer to it as a ‘core model ’ of architectural knowledge. Supporting evidence for the validity of our model, i.e. the supposed complete coverage, has been obtained by an attempt to falsify this claim through a comparison with selected literature. Application of the core model to characterize the use of architectural knowledge indicates possible areas of improvement for architectural knowledge management in the four organizations. 1

Abstract. Quality goals have to be under a special consideration during software architectural design. Evolvability constitutes a quality goal with a special relevance for business critical systems. Architectural patterns can significantly contribute to the satisfaction of quality goals. But architectural design decisions regarding these goals have to be made in a systematic, methodical way and concerning the patterns ’ influence on quality properties. Unfortunately, pattern catalogs do not well support quality goal-oriented design decisions. This paper presents a systematic refinement and mapping of the quality goal evolvability to properties for good architectural design. A set of architectural patterns is evaluated regarding these properties. Furthermore, a calculation scheme is provided that enables the evaluation of the patterns to support design decisions. The results have been developed, revised, and evaluated in a series of applications based on industrial expertise. 1

Abstract. Software Architecture (SA) allows for early assessment of and design for quality attributes of a software system, and it is playing a critical role in current software development. However, there is no consensus on fundamental issues such as design methods and representation organization and languages, and current proposals lack specificity and preciseness. In this paper we define an architecture design method that enables the systematic and assisted construction of the software architecture of Enterprise Applications, taking into account major quality attributes involved in this family of systems. We apply Model-Driven Engineering and Aspect-Oriented techniques to achieve this goal. The architecture is treated as a model organized in Architectural Views, using aspects to improve separation of concerns, and encoding the application of design decisions in terms of model transformations. The architectural rationale is explicitly registered as the set of transformations that yields the complete SA from scratch. We illustrate the application of the approach by designing the SA of a case study from the literature. 1

Abstract. Current techniques for modelling software architecture do not support the modelling of architectural design rules, which are recognized as important design artefacts by current research in software architecture. This is a problem in the context of Model-Driven Development in which it is assumed that major design artefacts are represented as formal or semi-formal models. This paper addresses this problem by proposing how architectural design rules could be expressed in UML in a meta-model for the system model

Abstract. Agile methods have gained popularity in the software industry. A prioritized list referred to as a backlog is used as a means to manage development. The challenges in development management are, e.g., that a backlog does not provide a view to dependencies such as a feature requiring another feature or consequences of changes are not visible. We describe an approach towards managing development by analyzing the integration of a backlog and feature model. The integration is based on a correspondence between Kumbang feature modeling and Agilefant backlog meta-models. We describe the analyses that the integration conceptually enables i.e. analyses of development status, feature properties, and backlog order. The utility of the analyses is discussed in the context of change of a feature model and backlog. 1

Successful Architecting in-the-large, namely across various architecture genres and domains of application, will require Architecture Description in-the-large. This position paper addresses the issues of the workshop from insights of Architecture Description, as those ideas have evolved from Software Architecture. It is a heretical or minimalist approach maintaining that for the most part Architecting is Architecting, and that the differences across domains and genres derive from the key architectural drivers, namely: Stakeholders and Concerns. In that context, I further argue what is needed to better address stakeholder and concerns in context.

The ideas and findings in this report should not be construed as an official DoD position. It is published in the interest of scientific and technical information exchange.

Modeling in software engineering application is an important tool for dealing with programming complexity and inter-relationship between various parts of any software package during development process. Modeling concept is characterized by focusing only on the relevant details of any problem and ignoring everything else in order to develop software domains understanding. Real problems can be divided into four different interconnected domains; problem domain, usage domain, development domain and system domain. This work reports a methodology for software development technique with the aim of achieving an adaptable scheme for requirements implementation in order to assists OO analysis based on component software architectures [3]. The proposed software model comprises of three distinct worlds; problem, conceptual, and representational worlds. It is sought in order to characterize object-oriented modeling with particular emphasis on the relationship between the objects and classes in the representational model and the elements in the considered system. Results of implementing this model are included and proved satisfactory.

The architecture of a software-intensive system can be defined as the set of relevant design decisions that affect the qualities of the overall system functionality; therefore, architectural decisions are eventually crucial to the success of a software project. The software engineering literature describes several techniques to choose among architectural alternatives, but it gives no clear guidance on which technique is more suitable than another, and in which circumstances. As such, there is no systematic way for software engineers to choose among decision-making techniques for resolving tradeoffs in architecture design. In this article, we provide a comparison of existing decision-making techniques, aimed to guide architects in their selection. The results show that there is no “best ” decision-making technique; however, some techniques are more susceptible to specific difficulties. Hence architects should choose a decision-making technique based on the difficulties that they wish to avoid. This article represents a first attempt to reason on meta-decision-making, that is, the issue of deciding how to decide.

Abstract — Software Architecture allows for early assessment of and design for quality attributes of a software system. It provides an important help for current software development. The development of software architecture is complex due to the absence of a standard way that lead the generation of software architecture artifacts. In this paper we define an architecture design method that provides the systematic method for software architecture of business application. We apply model driven engineering techniques to achieve the goal, the architecture is treated as a model composed of related models and application of design decision is encoded in terms of model transformation. We define a specialization of the attribute driven design(Add) method using model driven engineering techniques that systematizes and assists the Decision Making activity.