A Comprehensive Framework for Architecture Evaluation

ssible and to facilitate the evolution and refinement of the method. Such a method must provide a consistent framework regardless of the architecture representations used and of the granularity of the architectural information available, so that it is defined upon consistent concepts and principles in all situations. Context and Related Work Many relevant and complementary representations of software architectures exist. They allow software architects to reason more precisely and efficiently (e.g. [SG96], [BCK98]). Based on such representations, several papers have attempted to identify critical patterns used in architectures (patterns that describe a set of components, connectors, and properties, such as Layer Bridging or, Crosstalk in [KB98]) and have used these to assess architectures. Kazman and Burth [KB98] have also looked at the consistency of patterns in architecture representations as a basis for evaluation, on the assumption that patt