SQUA³RE: Software Quality Attribute Analysis by Architecture Reconstruction

Architecture reconstruction is the process by which architectural views of an implemented system are obtained from existing artifacts. While previous work investigated recovery techniques, such as clustering and pattern matching, this work provides research on architecture reconstruction that is driven by quality attribute analysis. The analysis typically occurs when existing systems hit their architectural boundaries caused by product growth or expansion scenarios. The information gathered during architecture reconstruction has to satisfy the information needs for these scenarios in order to provide reasoning during decision-making processes. The work is crucial for organizations that have to make architectural decisions about existing systems, or want to lower the adoption barriers for product lines by investigating the reuse of existing assets.

SQUA³RE focuses on the following concrete results:

1. A framework for architecture reconstruction in the context of quality attribute analysis
2. The integration of a few quality attribute models in the framework
3. A process to perform quality attribute driven architecture reconstruction
4. Case studies
5. A prototype toolkit that implements the major concepts of the analysis and reconstruction framework

Contributors

This project received partial support from the SEI and the Robert Bosch Corporation.

Key Publications