Towards a broader view on software architecture analysis of flexibility

Software architecture analysis helps us assess the quality of a software system at an early stage. In this paper we describe a case study of software architecture analysis that we have performed to assess the flexibility of a large administrative system. Our analysis was based on scenarios, representing possible changes to the requirements of the system and its environment. Assessing the effect of these scenarios provides insight into the flexibility of the system. One of the problems is to express the effect of a scenario in such a way that it provides insight into the complexity of the necessary changes. Part of our research is directed at developing an instrument for doing just that. This instrument is applied in the analysis described in this paper

A Web-Services Approach for Integration of Heterogeneous Bioinformatics Databases and Software

Biotechnology researchers increasingly rely their research on the large amount of data stored in multiple heterogeneous bioinformatics databases. Typically, they need to access these databases in a sequential and/or a parallel manner. Thus, an integrated environment and a unified interface are critical for them. This thesis addresses this requirement by introducing a Web-Services based architecture for integrating bioinformatics databases and discusses an implementation that integrates the PDB database, the ProTherm database and the MuSE software. The integrated system has a multiple-tier architecture centered with Web-Services. In addition to use Web-Services as the interface to access databases, the system uses JSP for presentation, Servlet as the controller to provide an extensible and flexible integration management component, and Databases as the backend for data storage. The interface of the integrated system uses multiple frames and provides a unified interface to access integrated system as well as other databases and software

Change decision support:extraction and analysis of late architecture changes using change characterization and software metrics

Software maintenance is one of the most crucial aspects of software development. Software engineering researchers must develop practical solutions to handle the challenges presented in maintaining mature software systems. Research that addresses practical means of mitigating the risks involved when changing software, reducing the complexity of mature software systems, and eliminating the introduction of preventable bugs is paramount to today’s software engineering discipline. Giving software developers the information that they need to make quality decisions about changes that will negatively affect their software systems is a key aspect to mitigating those risks. This dissertation presents work performed to assist developers to collect and process data that plays a role in change decision-making during the maintenance phase. To address these problems, developers need a way to better understand the effects of a change prior to making the change. This research addresses the problems associated with increasing architectural complexity caused by software change using a twoold approach. The first approach is to characterize software changes to assess their architectural impact prior to their implementation. The second approach is to identify a set of architecture metrics that correlate to system quality and maintainability and to use these metrics to determine the level of difficulty involved in making a change. The two approaches have been combined and the results presented provide developers with a beneficial analysis framework that offers insight into the change process

Design flexibility in complex engineering systems under multiple uncertainties

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN