Most of today’s software systems are large-scaled and have to manage manifold demands. To ease their development, reusable and proven architectural building blocks, for example architectural patterns, are often composed to the desired architecture. Building blocks are specified by their structure and behaviour. Additionally, each architectural building block has specific properties which are in...

Quality attributes and constraints are among the main drivers of architectural decision making. The quality attributes are improved or damaged by the architectural decisions, while restrictions directly include or exclude parts of the architecture (for example, the logical components or technologies). We can determine the impact of a decision of architecture in software quality, or which parts ...

A central tenet of software architecture design is to base this on a formulation of desired quality attributes, such as buildability, performance, and availability of the target system. Thus there is a need for architectural evaluation—ensuring the architecture’s support for desired quality attributes—and a variety of evaluation techniques have been developed, described, and used. Architectural...

Software architecture and design suffer from a lack of documented knowledge on how different architectural styles influence software quality. Existing software quality models do not allow engineers to evaluate whether a given software system adequately implements the basic principles of the chosen architectural style, and which architectural properties and best practices beyond these principles...

Architectural styles and patterns have been studied since the inception of software architecture as a discipline. We generalise architectural styles, patterns and similar concepts by introducing the notion of architectural constraints. An architectural constraint is a vehicle for the reuse of architectural design knowledge and for the improvement of software quality. It may be used for improvin...

Quality goals have to be under a special consideration during software architectural design. Evolvability constitutes a quality goal with a special relevance for business critical systems. Architectural patterns can significantly contribute to the satisfaction of quality goals. But architectural design decisions regarding these goals have to be made in a systematic, methodical way and concernin...

When designing software architectures, an architect relies on a set of pre-defined styles commonly named architectural patterns. While architectural patterns embody high level design decisions, an architectural tactic is a design strategy that addresses a particular quality attribute. Tactics; in fact, serve as the meeting point between the quality attributes and the software architecture. To g...

In this paper, we present a novel technique for assessing and prioritizing architectural quality in large-scale software development projects. The technique can, after an initial investment, be applied with relatively little effort by software architects and the technique is therefore suited for agile development in which quality attributes are assessed and prioritized within each development s...

flexibility as an ability to respond to changing circumstances is one of the vital characteristics of the natural and built environment. during the contemporary era, diversity of methods relating the architectural flexibility execution are suggested. but along with contemporary conceptual approaches toward pluralism and uncertainty, it seems that the multiplicity of approaches toward flexibilit...