TY - GEN
T1 - Constructing a Shared Infrastructure for Software Architecture Analysis and Maintenance
AU - Garcia, Joshua
AU - Mirakhorli, Mehdi
AU - Xiao, Lu
AU - Zhao, Yutong
AU - Mujhid, Ibrahim
AU - Pham, Khoi
AU - Okutan, Ahmet
AU - Malek, Sam
AU - Kazman, Rick
AU - Cai, Yuanfang
AU - Medvidovic, Nenad
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 IEEE.
PY - 2021/3
Y1 - 2021/3
N2 - Over the past three decades software engineering researchers have produced a wide range of techniques and tools for understanding the architectures of large, complex systems. However, these have tended to be one-off research projects, and their idiosyncratic natures have hampered research collaboration, extension and combination of the tools, and technology transfer. The area of software architecture is rich with disjoint research and development infrastructures, and datasets that are either proprietary or captured in proprietary formats. This paper describes a concerted effort to reverse these trends. We have designed and implemented a flexible and extensible infrastructure (SAIN) with the goal of sharing, replicating, and advancing software architecture research. We have demonstrated that SAIN is capable of incorporating the constituent tools extracted from three independently developed, large, long-lived software architecture research environments. We discuss SAIN's ambitious goals, the challenges we have faced in achieving those goals, the key decisions made in SAIN's design and implementation, the lessons learned from our experience to date, and our ongoing and future work.
AB - Over the past three decades software engineering researchers have produced a wide range of techniques and tools for understanding the architectures of large, complex systems. However, these have tended to be one-off research projects, and their idiosyncratic natures have hampered research collaboration, extension and combination of the tools, and technology transfer. The area of software architecture is rich with disjoint research and development infrastructures, and datasets that are either proprietary or captured in proprietary formats. This paper describes a concerted effort to reverse these trends. We have designed and implemented a flexible and extensible infrastructure (SAIN) with the goal of sharing, replicating, and advancing software architecture research. We have demonstrated that SAIN is capable of incorporating the constituent tools extracted from three independently developed, large, long-lived software architecture research environments. We discuss SAIN's ambitious goals, the challenges we have faced in achieving those goals, the key decisions made in SAIN's design and implementation, the lessons learned from our experience to date, and our ongoing and future work.
KW - architecture analysis
KW - interoperability
KW - maintenance
KW - reproducibility
KW - reusability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107005908&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85107005908&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICSA51549.2021.00022
DO - 10.1109/ICSA51549.2021.00022
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85107005908
T3 - Proceedings - IEEE 18th International Conference on Software Architecture, ICSA 2021
SP - 150
EP - 161
BT - Proceedings - IEEE 18th International Conference on Software Architecture, ICSA 2021
T2 - 18th IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture, ICSA 2021
Y2 - 22 March 2021 through 26 March 2021
ER -