Software Architecture for Product Families

This book simplifies the intimidating process of learning how to design software for product-line engineering by focusing on three key aspects of architectural practice: architecture description, assessment, and recovery. Practitioners will learn how to pinpoint the source of their problems, focus on the big picture, and see what kinds of problems can be addressed with the product-family approach. With this book as a guide, software developers will be able to implement a sound product-family architecture that will result in better quality, reduced costs, and decreased time to market.

Table of contents

Preface

How to Read This Book

Acknowledgments

Introduction

ARES Motivation

ARES Team

ARES Process Model for Architecture-Centered Software Development

ARES Objectives

Chapter 1 ARES Conceptual Framework for Software Architecture

1.1 Genealogy of ARES Conceptual Framework for Software Architecture

1.2 Software Architecture: A Tool for Dealing with Complexity

1.3 Conceptual Framework for Software Architecture

1.4 What Is Software Architecture?

1.5 Architecturally Significant Requirements

1.6 Architectural Concepts

1.7 Component Domains

1.8 Architectural Structures

1.9 Architectural Views

1.10 Layers of Functionality

1.11 Clusters of Functionality

1.12 Abstract Machine Model

1.13 Texture of Software

1.14 Hierarchy of Architectural Scopes

1.15 Final Remarks

Chapter 2 Software Architecture Description

2.1 Current Research in ADLs

2.2 ADL Requirements for ARES

2.3 Darwin

2.4 Tool Support for Darwin

2.5 The Use of Darwin in ARES

2.6 Koala

2.7 Final Remarks

Chapter 3 Software Architecture Assessment

3.1 Approaches to Architectural Assessment

3.2 Advances in the Industrial Application of Assessment

3.3 Quality Assessment Process

3.4 Final Remarks

Chapter 4 Software Architecture Recovery

4.1 Architecture Recovery Based on Properties

4.2 The ARES Approach to Software Architecture Recovery

4.3 Issues and Challenges of Architecture Recovery

4.4 Common Architectural Properties

4.5 Architecture Recovery of Single Systems

4.6 From Single Systems to a Product Family Architecture

4.7 From a Product Family Architecture to a Reference Architecture

4.8 Final Remarks

Chapter 5 Experiences with Family Architectures for Mass Electronics

5.1 The Basics of Mass Electronics Systems

5.2 Current Practice in 1995 and How We Worked

5.3 Architectural Problems

5.4 Software Family Architecture Considerations

5.5 Dealing with the Architectural Problems

5.6 Final Remarks

Chapter 6 Simple Things That Work: Learning from Experiences with Telecommunications

6.1 The Nokia Case Studies

6.2 Design Decision Trees

6.3 Designing and Describing Interfaces

6.4 Modeling Execution Architectures

6.5 Final Remarks

Chapter 7 The TCS Experience with the Recovery of Family Architecture

7.1 The Case Study

7.2 Recovery of System Structure

7.3 The Recovered Architecture

7.4 Commonality Analysis

7.5 Description of Architectures

7.6 Final Remarks

Chapter 8 Looking Back and Looking Ahead

8.1 Why This Book?

8.2 Some Things That Worked

8.3 Some Problems We Encountered

8.4 Putting Research into Practice

8.5 Education of a Software Architect

8.6 State of the Practice and Future Outlook

Bibliography

Index