Estimation and Generation of Software Architectural Specification to Handle Variation Points

Abstract

The development of a reliable and efficient software application system requires a competent software architecture which can attune to any design improvement opportunity in the early stages of software architectural design. An Architectural Description Language provides a description of all the component elements and their interactions. The proposed model determines all possible ways of connecting the components and connectors, after eliminating the transitive and symmetric conflicts among the connections, followed by the generation of the software architectural specification. An estimate on the maximum number of architectural specifications generated for a given number of components has been carried out. The syntax for specifying the components and the connectors has been formulated. The model proposed in the current work is generic and it will significantly help a software architect in building reliable, efficient and flexible software architecture, for any valid combination of components and connectors. It has been successfully tested for two prototype applications that involve processing of images and documents.