115 research outputs found
Resolving Architectural Mismatches of COTS Through Architectural Reconciliation
The integration of COTS components into a system under development entails architectural mismatches. These have been tackled, so far, at the component level, through component adaptation techniques, but they also must be tackled at an architectural level of abstraction. In this paper we propose an approach for resolving architectural mismatches, with the aid of architectural reconciliation. The approach consists of designing and subsequently reconciling two architectural models, one that is forward-engineered from the requirements and another that is reverse-engineered from the COTS-based implementation. The final reconciled model is optimally adapted both to the requirements and to the actual COTS-based implementation. The contribution of this paper lies in the application of architectural reconciliation in the context of COTS-based software development. Architectural modeling is based upon the UML 2.0 standard, while the reconciliation is performed by transforming the two models, with the help of architectural design decisions.
System and software architecting harmonization practices in ultra-large-scale systems of systems:A confirmatory case study
Context: The challenges posed by the architecting of System of Systems (SoS)
has motivated a significant number of research efforts in the area. However,
literature is lacking when it comes to the interplay between the disciplines
involved in the architecting process, a key factor in addressing these
challenges.Objective: This paper aims to contribute to this line of research by
confirming and extending previously characterized architecting harmonization
practices from Systems and Software Engineering, adopted in an
ultra-large-scale SoS. Method: We conducted a confirmatory case study on the
Square-Kilometre Array (SKA) project to evaluate and extend the findings of our
exploratory case on the LOFAR/LOFAR2.0 radio-telescope projects. In doing so, a
pre-study was conducted to map the findings of the previous study with respect
to the SKA context. A survey was then designed, through which the views of 46
SKA engineers were collected and analyzed. Results: The study confirmed in
various degrees the four practices identified in the exploratory case, and
provided further insights about them, namely: (1) the friction between
disciplines caused by long-term system requirements, and how they can be
ameliorated through intermediate, short-term requirements; (2) the way design
choices with a cross-cutting impact on multiple agile teams have an indirect
impact on the system architecture; (3) how these design choices are often
caused by the criteria that guided early system decomposition; (4) the
seemingly recurrent issue with the lack of details about the dynamic elements
of the interfaces; and (5) the use of machine-readable interface specifications
for aligning hardware/software development processes
- …