Software Architecture Decomposition Using Attributes

Abstract

Software architectural design has an enormous effect on downstream software artifacts. Decomposition of function for the final system is one of the critical steps in software architectural design. The process of decomposition is typically conducted by designers based on their intuition and past experiences, which may not be robust sometimes. This paper presents a study of applying the clustering technique to support system decomposition based on requirements and their attributes. The approach can support the architectural design process by grouping closely related requirements to form a subsystem or module. In this paper, we demonstrate our experiments in applying the approach to an industrial communication protocol software system and comparing several clustering algorithms. The result obtained from WPGMA (weighted pair-group method using arithmetic averages) shows closer resemblance than other clustering methods to the one developed by the designer.

Software architecture decomposition using adaptive K-nearest neighbor algorithm

“…APPROACH In this section, we give more details about the problem and suggested solution. Lung et al investigated software architecture decomposition using attributes [5]. They decomposed software through five steps: (1) identify functional requirement, (2) identify attributes, (3) identify the relationship between requirements and attributes, (4) apply clustering, and (5) develop a conceptual architecture.…”

“…A-KNN has been used for software refactoring at the package level [1], however, the objective in that study is limited to balance software coupling and cohesion by redistributing classes over packages or create new packages in software systems written using objectoriented programming languages. In other words, the study in [1] does not handle the general case presented in [5] for identifying the requirements and attributes. In [5], and in step (1) of software decomposition process, the critical requirements will be identified.…”

“…In other words, the study in [1] does not handle the general case presented in [5] for identifying the requirements and attributes. In [5], and in step (1) of software decomposition process, the critical requirements will be identified. In this study, the focus is on functional requirements.…”

“…A requirement attribute can be: (i) items, typically objects, explicitly specified in the requirements; (ii) user-defined attributes (e.g., data structures defined by the designer); or (iii) system attributes that relate to the operating environments or other systems. The techniques presented in [1,2] do not give this flexibility in first two steps as it is handles specific types of software components (functions or [5] packages) and specific types of the attributes for those components (features of functions or packages). For example, the refactoring approaches presented in [1,2] cannot be applied on systems written on structural programming languages while the approaches presented in [5,6] is independent from the type of programming language.…”

Optimizing decomposition of software architecture for local recovery

“…Clustering techniques have also been used for forward engineering. For example, in (Lung et al 2007), requirements are clustered to create a conceptual architecture in early design phases. The interdependencies between requirements are identified based on their attributes as described in the requirements document.…”