Multi-View Software Architecture Design: Case Study of a Mission-Critical Defense System

An architecture outlines what a system can or cannot do. Attention to software architecture is essential for successful product developments. Therefore, software architecture development is a crucial phase in software development process. As the software intensive systems become complex, software architects face with the challenges of dealing with multiple sometimes conflicting concerns at the same time. Satisfaction of quality requirements can be achieved via a good software architecture design. Since the quality requirements are multi-faceted, the software architects have to consider many diverse aspects and provide a software architectural solution that can optimally satisfy functional and quality requirements. Such a solution requires a multi-view software architecture design as the result of a systematic architecture development process. Case studies are helpful in bridging the gap between academia and industry. Research studies including carefully designed case studies will help practitioners to understand the theoretical concepts and apply novel research findings in their practices. Hence, in this study, we explain a multi-view software architecture design process with the help of a mission-critical defense system development case study. In the study, we explain the multi-view software architecture design step by step starting with identifying the system context, requirements, constraints, and quality expectations. We further outline the strategies, techniques, designs, and rationales used to satisfy a diverse set of requirements with a particular software architecture pattern. We also introduce a novel architectural style, named as “star-controller architectural style”. We explain the use of the style with a related discussion.