Integrating Quality-Attribute Reasoning Frameworks in the ArchE Design Assistant

Techniques and tools for specific quality-attribute issues are becoming a mainstream in architecture design. This approach is practical for evaluating the architecture in early stages but also for planning improvements for it. Thus, we believe that one challenge is the integration of the individual capabilities of quality-attribute techniques. This paper presents our research work on a design assistant called ArchE that, based on reasoning framework technology, provides an infrastructure for third-party researchers to integrate their own quality-attribute models. This infrastructure aims at facilitating the experimentation and sharing of quality-attribute knowledge in both research and educational contexts.