Semi-Automated Incremental Synchronization between Conceptual and Implementation Level Architectures

In practice, there are many differences between an implementation-level architecture (such as one derived using architectural recovery techniques) and a more conceptual architecture used at design time. We present a lightweight, scalable, semi-automated, incremental approach for synchronizing a Componentand-Connector (C&C) view retrieved from an implementation with a conceptual C&C view described in an Architectural Description Language. Our approach can automatically detect corresponding elements in the presence of insertions, deletions, renames, and moves, and incrementally synchronize the two views. 1

Submitted for publication. Semi-Automated Incremental Synchronization between Conceptual and Implementation Level Architectures

In practice, there are many differences between an implementation-level architecture (such as one derived using architectural recovery techniques) and a more conceptual architecture used at design time. Furthermore, additional differences may be introduced during software development and evolution due to documentation or implementation defects. This makes ensuring conformance between an architectural design and code a difficult problem worth addressing. We present a lightweight, scalable, semi-automated, incremental approach for synchronizing a Componentand-Connector (C&C) view retrieved from an implementation with a conceptual C&C view described in an Architectural Description Language. Our tool can automatically detect corresponding elements in the presence of insertions, deletions, renames, and moves, and incrementally synchronize the two views. When we applied the approach on an architecture of over 20 components, we found several divergences between the conceptual and implementation level architectures. 1