Architectural Synthesis: Integrating Multiple Architectural Perspectives

There are many tools and techniques available to understand and analyze a system at the architectural level. Each of these may provide its own perspective of the key architectural elements of the system. We introduce the process of architectural synthesis to deal with the problem of integrating these different architectural perspectives. We emphasize the utility of the synthesis process in supporting the evolution of legacy software systems. The four steps of the synthesis process form a cycle and include acquiring different perspectives (generation), grouping common perspectives (classification), combining all perspectives that apply to the same view (union), and finally composing views to determine consistency (fusion). We give an example of the application of the synthesis process applied to the architecture of a software visualization tool. Our preliminary investigation shows that synthesized architectural perspectives provide a more complete representation of a real system. Use of the synthesis process uncovers inconsistencies pointing to areas needing further analysis or explanation. We conclude with directions for future research in this area and a description of the REMORA synthesis environment we are building to support architectural synthesis.