research-article

On the modularity impact of architectural assumptions

Authors:

Dimitri Van Landuyt,

Wouter JoosenAuthors Info & Claims

NEMARA '12: Proceedings of the 2012 workshop on Next Generation Modularity Approaches for Requirements and Architecture

Pages 13 - 16

https://doi.org/10.1145/2162004.2162008

Published: 27 March 2012 Publication History

Abstract

In software architecture design, the end product is the combined result of a wide variety of inputs, most of which are provided by the non-technical stakeholders. These include the analysis of the problem domain, the functional and non-functional requirements, the architectural or technical constraints. However, a software architecture is typically also influenced by different, less visible factors such as the architect's prior experience and his creativity. In this paper, we focus on so-called architectural assumptions, which are key premises made by technical stakeholders in the early phases of the software development life-cycle.

Often these assumptions are made silently and not documented explicitly in the description of the architecture. As a result, they introduce a certain degree of rigor in the software product that hinders the evolvability, variability, and reusability of the architectural solution as a whole and its individual building blocks.

Additionally, architectural assumptions in many cases exert a crosscutting influence on the software architecture and its description. This makes it hard to discover them, assess their individual architectural impact, and treat them as first-class architectural elements.

In this position paper, we explore and discuss these modularity problems in specific examples from a patient monitoring system (e-health). Furthermore, we introduce the distinction between problem-space and solution-space architectural assumptions, and we discuss their intrinsic differences.

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Cited By

Harrison NAguiar A(2024)The Nature of Questions that Arise During Software Architecture DesignSoftware Architecture10.1007/978-3-031-70797-1_3(37-52)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-70797-1_3
Van Landuyt DJoosen WGalster MMirakhorli M(2015)On the role of early architectural assumptions in quality attribute scenariosProceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Twin Peaks of Requirements and Architecture10.5555/2821481.2821486(9-15)Online publication date: 16-May-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2821481.2821486
Van Landuyt DJoosen W(2014)Modularizing Early Architectural Assumptions in Scenario-Based RequirementsProceedings of the 17th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 841110.1007/978-3-642-54804-8_12(170-184)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-54804-8_12
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

On the modularity impact of architectural assumptions
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. System description languages
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Software system structures
      1. Software architectures

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

NEMARA '12: Proceedings of the 2012 workshop on Next Generation Modularity Approaches for Requirements and Architecture

March 2012

30 pages

ISBN:9781450311274

DOI:10.1145/2162004

Program Chairs:
Awais Rashid
Lancaster University, UK
,
João Araújo
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
,
Jörg Kienzle
McGill University, Canada
,
Bedir Tekinerdoğan
Bilkent University, Turkey
,
Ana Moreira
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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AOSA: Aspect-Oriented Software Association

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 March 2012

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architectural assumption

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AOSD '12

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AOSD '12: Aspect-oriented Software Development

March 27, 2012

Potsdam, Germany

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Cited By

Harrison NAguiar A(2024)The Nature of Questions that Arise During Software Architecture DesignSoftware Architecture10.1007/978-3-031-70797-1_3(37-52)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-70797-1_3
Van Landuyt DJoosen WGalster MMirakhorli M(2015)On the role of early architectural assumptions in quality attribute scenariosProceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Twin Peaks of Requirements and Architecture10.5555/2821481.2821486(9-15)Online publication date: 16-May-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2821481.2821486
Van Landuyt DJoosen W(2014)Modularizing Early Architectural Assumptions in Scenario-Based RequirementsProceedings of the 17th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 841110.1007/978-3-642-54804-8_12(170-184)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-54804-8_12
Van Landuyt DTruyen EJoosen W(2012)Documenting Early Architectural Assumptions in Scenario-Based RequirementsProceedings of the 2012 Joint Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture and European Conference on Software Architecture10.1109/WICSA-ECSA.212.55(329-333)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/WICSA-ECSA.212.55

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