Semantic model-driven development of service-centric software architectures

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a recent architectural paradigm that has received much attention. The prevalent focus on platforms such as Web services, however, needs to be complemented by appropriate software engineering methods. We propose the model-driven development of service-centric software systems. We present in particular an investigation into the role of enriched semantic modelling for a modeldriven development framework for service-centric software systems. Ontologies as the foundations of semantic modelling and its enhancement through architectural pattern modelling are at the core of the proposed approach. We introduce foundations and discuss the benefits and also the challenges in this context

Adaptive development and maintenance of user-centric software systems

A software system cannot be developed without considering the various facets of its environment. Stakeholders – including the users that play a central role – have their needs, expectations, and perceptions of a system. Organisational and technical aspects of the environment are constantly changing. The ability to adapt a software system and its requirements to its environment throughout its full lifecycle is of paramount importance in a constantly changing environment. The continuous involvement of users is as important as the constant evaluation of the system and the observation of evolving environments. We present a methodology for adaptive software systems development and maintenance. We draw upon a diverse range of accepted methods including participatory design, software architecture, and evolutionary design. Our focus is on user-centred software systems

Content-driven design and architecture of E-learning applications

E-learning applications combine content with learning technology systems to support the creation of content and its delivery to the learner. In the future, we can expect the distinction between learning content and its supporting infrastructure to become blurred. Content objects will interact with infrastructure services as independent objects. Our solution to the development of e-learning applications – content-driven design and architecture – is based on content-centric ontological modelling and development of architectures. Knowledge and modelling will play an important role in the development of content and architectures. Our approach integrates content with interaction (in technical and educational terms) and services (the principle organization for a system architecture), based on techniques from different fields, including software engineering, learning design, and knowledge engineering

Classifying and evaluating architecture design methods

The concept of software architecture has gained a wide popularity and is generally considered to play a fundamental role in coping with the inherent difficulties of the development of large-scale and complex software systems. This document first gives a definition of architectures. Second, a meta-model for architecture design methods is presented. This model is used for classifying and evaluating various architecture design approaches. The document concludes with the description of the identified problems

How Do Experienced Architects Use Architecture Development Methods?

Software architecture methods play a central role in the development of large enterprise computer systems. However, the extent to which individual experienced IT architects employ a software architecture method is largely unknown. In this paper, we surveyed a group of experienced architects, and set up an “in practice” field study of some of these architects to explore the way they applied a well documented software architecture development method. Among the findings to emerge are that architects modify their method more regularly than previously recognised, and that tools for visual communication are the most commonly used tools by these architects

Software architecture visualisation

Tracing the history of software engineering reveals a series of abstractions. In early days, software engineers would construct software using machine code. As time progressed, software engineers and computer scientists developed higher levels of abstraction in order to provide tools to assist in building larger software systems. This has resulted in high-level languages, modelling languages, design patterns, and software architecture. Software architecture has been recognised as an important tool for designing and building software. Some research takes the view that the success or failure of a software development project depends heavily on the quality of the software architecture. For any software system, there are a number of individuals who have some interest in the architecture. These stakeholders have differing requirements of the software architecture depending on the role that they take. Stakeholders include the architects, designers, developers and also the sales, services and support teams and even the customer for the software. Communication and understanding of the architecture is essential in ensuring that each stakeholder can play their role during the design, development and deployment of that software system. Software visualisation has traditionally been focused on aiding the understanding of software systems by those who perform development and maintenance tasks on that software. In supporting developers and maintainers, software visualisation has been largely concerned with representing static and dynamic aspects of software at the code level. Typically, a software visualisation will represent control flow, classes, objects, import relations and other such low level abstractions of the software. This research identifies the fundamental issues concerning software architecture visualisation. It does this by identifying the practical use of software architecture in the real world, and considers the application of software visualisation techniques to the visualisation of software architecture. The aim of this research is to explore the ways in which software architecture visualisation can assist in the tasks undertaken by the differing stakeholders in a software system and its architecture. A prototype tool, named ArchVis, has been developed to enable the exploration of some of the fundamental issues in software architecture visualisation. ArchVis is a new approach to software architecture visualisation that is capable of utilising multiple sources and representations of architecture in order to generate multiple views of software architecture. The mechanism by which views are generated means that they can be more relevant to a wider collection of stakeholders in that architecture. During evaluation ArchVis demonstrates the capability of utilising a number of data sources in order to produce architecture visualisations. Arch Vis' view model is capable of generating the necessary views for architecture stakeholders and those stakeholders can navigate through the views and data in order to obtain relevant information. The results of evaluating ArchVis using a framework and scenarios demonstrate that the majority of the objectives of this research have been achieved

An evaluation of the software architecture efficiency using the Clichés and behavioral diagrams pertaining to the unified modeling language

The software architecture plays essential role for the development of the complicated software systems and it is important to evaluate the software architecture efficiency. One way to evaluate the software architecture is to create an executable model from the architecture. Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams are used to describe the software architecture. UML has made it easy to use and to evaluate the necessary requirements at the software architecture level. It creates an executable model from these diagrams; yet, since the UML is a standard semi-formal language for describing the software architecture, evaluating the software architecture is not directly possible through it. Furthermore, in order to evaluate the software architecture, one needs to turn the actual model into the formal model. In this study, first we describe the architecture using the UML. Then, some properties of the software architecture are mentioned using the UML sequence diagram, deployment diagram, use case diagram, and component diagram. The necessary information associated with the qualitative characteristic of efficiency will be margined as clichés and labels to these diagrams. The independent and dependent components will be extracted from the component diagram. Finally, the resulted semi-formal model will be mapped into a formal model based on the colored Petri net and finally the evaluation will take place

Toward Establishing a Catalog of Security Architecture Weaknesses

The architecture design of a software system plays a crucial role in addressing security requirements early in the development lifecycle through forming design solutions that prevent or mitigate attacks in a system. Consequently, flaws in the software architecture can impact various security concerns in the system, thereby introducing severe breaches that could be exploited by attackers. In this context, this thesis presents the new concept of Common Architectural Weakness Enumeration (CAWE), a catalog that identifies and categorizes common types of vulnerabilities rooted in the software architecture design and provides mitigation techniques to address each of them. Through this catalog, we aim to promote the awareness of architectural flaws and stimulate security design thinking to developers, architects and software engineers. This work also investigates the reported vulnerabilities from four real and complex software systems to verify the existence and implications of architecture weaknesses. From this investigation, we noted that a variety of breaches are indeed rooted in the software design (at least 35% in the investigated systems), providing evidence that architectural weaknesses frequently occurs in complex systems, resulting in medium to high severe vulnerabilities. Therefore, a catalog of such type of weaknesses can be useful for adopting proactive approaches to avoid design vulnerabilities