A BASis (or ABASs) for Reasoning About Software Architectures

This paper discusses the use of Attribute-Based Architectural Styles (ABASs)—architectural styles accompanied by explicit analysis reasoning frameworks—in design. The paper has two main objectives: to convince readers that ABASs provide a basis for insightful reasoning about a software architecture’s ability to meet its quality attribute goals; and to demonstrate the utility of ABASs by showing an example of how ABASs are used to design an industrial system architecture entirely via ABASs. In the process of designing this architecture, we show excerpts from our growing ABAS handbook and argue for why ABASs help us in designing architectures efficiently and predictably.