53,592 research outputs found
Linking Quality Attributes and Constraints with Architectural Decisions
Quality attributes and constraints are among the main drivers of
architectural decision making. The quality attributes are improved or damaged
by the architectural decisions, while restrictions directly include or exclude
parts of the architecture (for example, the logical components or
technologies). We can determine the impact of a decision of architecture in
software quality, or which parts of the architecture are affected by a
constraint, but the difficult problem is whether we are respecting the quality
requirements (requirements on quality attributes) and constraints with all the
architectural decisions made. Currently, the common practice is that architects
use their own experience to design architectures that meet the quality
requirements and restrictions, but at the end, especially for the crucial
decisions, the architect has to deal with complex trade-offs between quality
attributes and juggle possible incompatibilities raised by the constraints. In
this paper we present Quark, a computer-aided method to support architects in
software architecture decision making
How do software architects consider non-functional requirements: an exploratory study
© 2012 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Dealing with non-functional requirements (NFRs) has posed a challenge onto software engineers for many years. Over the years, many methods and techniques have been proposed to improve their elicitation, documentation, and validation. Knowing more about the state of the practice on these topics may benefit both practitioners' and researchers' daily work. A few empirical studies have been conducted in the past, but none under the perspective of software architects, in spite of the great influence that NFRs have on daily architects' practices. This paper presents some of the findings of an empirical study based on 13 interviews with software architects. It addresses questions such as: who decides the NFRs, what types of NFRs matter to architects, how are NFRs documented, and how are NFRs validated. The results are contextualized with existing previous work.Peer ReviewedPostprint (authorâs final draft
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Avoiding structural collapses in refurbishment - a decision support system (HSE research report)
Tracking decision-making during architectural design
There is a powerful cocktail of circumstances governing the way decisions are made during the architectural design process of a building project. There is considerable potential for misunderstandings, inappropriate changes, change which give rise to unforeseen difficulties, decisions which are not notified to all interested parties, and many other similar problems. The paper presents research conducted within the frame of the EPSRC funded ADS project aiming at addressing the problems linked with the evolution and changing environment of project information to support better decision-making. The paper presents the conceptual framework as well as the software environment that has been developed to support decision-making during building projects, and reports on work carried out on the application of the approach to the architectural design stage. This decision-tracking environment has been evaluated and validated by professionals and practitioners from industry using several instruments as described in the paper
Competences of IT Architects
The field of architecture in the digital world uses a plethora of terms to refer to different kinds of architects, and recognises a confusing variety of competences that these architects are required to have. Different service providers use different terms for similar architects and even if they use the same term, they may mean something different. This makes it hard for customers to know what competences an architect can be expected to have.\ud
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This book combines competence profiles of the NGI Platform for IT Professionals, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), as well as a number of Dutch IT service providers in a comprehensive framework. Using this framework, the book shows that notwithstanding a large variety in terminology, there is convergence towards a common set of competence profiles. In other words, when looking beyond terminological differences by using the framework, one sees that organizations recognize similar types of architects, and that similar architects in different organisations have similar competence profiles. The framework presented in this book thus provides an instrument to position architecture services as offered by IT service providers and as used by their customers.\ud
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The framework and the competence profiles presented in this book are the main results of the special interest group âProfessionalisationâ of the Netherlands Architecture Forum for the Digital World (NAF). Members of this group, as well as students of the universities of Twente and Nijmegen have contributed to the research on which this book is based
An initial performance review of software components for a heterogeneous computing platform
The design of embedded systems is a complex activity that involves a lot of
decisions. With high performance demands of present day usage scenarios and
software, they often involve energy hungry state-of-the-art computing units.
While focusing on power consumption of computing units, the physical properties
of software are often ignored. Recently, there has been a growing interest to
quantify and model the physical footprint of software (e.g. consumed power,
generated heat, execution time, etc.), and a component based approach
facilitates methods for describing such properties. Based on these, software
architects can make energy-efficient software design solutions. This paper
presents power consumption and execution time profiling of a component software
that can be allocated on heterogeneous computing units (CPU, GPU, FPGA) of a
tracked robot
Combined automotive safety and security pattern engineering approach
Automotive systems will exhibit increased levels of automation as well as ever tighter integration with other vehicles, traffic infrastructure, and cloud services. From safety perspective, this can be perceived as boon or bane - it greatly increases complexity and uncertainty, but at the same time opens up new opportunities for realizing innovative safety functions. Moreover, cybersecurity becomes important as additional concern because attacks are now much more likely and severe. However, there is a lack of experience with security concerns in context of safety engineering in general and in automotive safety departments in particular. To address this problem, we propose a systematic pattern-based approach that interlinks safety and security patterns and provides guidance with respect to selection and combination of both types of patterns in context of system engineering. A combined safety and security pattern engineering workflow is proposed to provide systematic guidance to support non-expert engineers based on best practices. The application of the approach is shown and demonstrated by an automotive case study and different use case scenarios.EC/H2020/692474/EU/Architecture-driven, Multi-concern and Seamless Assurance and Certification of Cyber-Physical Systems/AMASSEC/H2020/737422/EU/Secure COnnected Trustable Things/SCOTTEC/H2020/732242/EU/Dependability Engineering Innovation for CPS - DEIS/DEISBMBF, 01IS16043, Collaborative Embedded Systems (CrESt
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