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Dynamically discovering architectures with DiscoTect

Authors:

Bradley Schmerl,

David Garlan,

Hong YanAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Volume 30, Issue 5

Pages 103 - 106

https://doi.org/10.1145/1095430.1081724

Published: 01 September 2005 Publication History

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Abstract

One of the challenges for software architects is ensuring that an implemented system faithfully represents its architecture. We describe and demonstrate a tool, called DiscoTect, that addresses this challenge by dynamically monitoring a running system and deriving the software architecture as that system runs. The derivation process is based on mappings that relate low level system-level events to higher-level architectural events. The resulting architecture is then fed into existing architectural design tools so that comparisons can be conducted with the design time architecture and architectural analyses can be re-run to ensure that they are still valid. In addition to the demonstration, we briefly describe the mapping language and formal definition of the language in terms of Colored Petri Nets.

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Uceda-Ponga FMartin G(2014)An Automated Tool to Support the Software Design ProcessInnovations and Advances in Computing, Informatics, Systems Sciences, Networking and Engineering10.1007/978-3-319-06773-5_12(85-93)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2014
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06773-5_12
Diaz-Pace JCarlino JBlech MSoria ACampo M(2009)Assisting the synchronization of UCM-based architectural documentation with implementation2009 Joint Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture & European Conference on Software Architecture10.1109/WICSA.2009.5290801(151-160)Online publication date: Sep-2009
https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2009.5290801
Ficco MPietrantuono RRusso S(2018)Bug localization in test-driven developmentAdvances in Software Engineering10.1155/2011/4927572011(1-18)Online publication date: 11-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1155/2011/492757
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Index Terms

Dynamically discovering architectures with DiscoTect
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Software system structures
      1. Abstraction, modeling and modularity

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Reviews

Reviewer: Mario Kupries

This paper is intended for an audience familiar with the structural and operational aspects of software architectures. It offers a solid and systematic explanation of its topics, and applies a common architectural vocabulary, Extensible Markup Language (XML), and colored Petri nets. The authors outline the challenge of creating and adopting an agile software architecture to continuously represent an implemented system. This is an ambiguous requirement for dynamic structures and behaviors. The approach chosen, however, is an interpretative one; it is an approach described in previously published work. Also described in previously published papers are the limitations of such a formalized approach in reflecting changed components and connectors. The latest developments, like schema evolution and partial compilation, never appear, either as ideas or in the reference list. Another big minus is the omission of any architectural operations. In their introduction, the authors motivate the challenges and benefits of dynamically detecting software architectural structures. To achieve the discovery of dynamic architectures, the tool DiscoTect is introduced in section 2. Section 3 addresses implementation details, and is followed by an overview of related work (section 4). In their conclusion, the authors sum up the drawbacks of the chosen approach, and the discrepancies between their vision and realized work. The authors employ a well-defined, homogeneous vocabulary, which allows the reader to follow their explanations easily. The clear structure of the paper, and the systematic description of the tool DiscoTect, enables the reader to easily identify and understand the method applied and the results achieved. The graphical and formal means of expression, which are consistently applied throughout the entire text, illustrating the structure and operation of DiscoTect, are solidly reproducible. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Information & Contributors

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes Volume 30, Issue 5

September 2005

462 pages

ISSN:0163-5948

DOI:10.1145/1095430

Issue’s Table of Contents

ESEC/FSE-13: Proceedings of the 10th European software engineering conference held jointly with 13th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Foundations of software engineering
September 2005
402 pages
ISBN:1595930140
DOI:10.1145/1081706
General Chair:
Michel Wermelinger
The Open University, UK
,
Program Chair:
Harald C. Gall
University of Zurich, Switzerland

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 September 2005

Published in SIGSOFT Volume 30, Issue 5

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Cited By

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Uceda-Ponga FMartin G(2014)An Automated Tool to Support the Software Design ProcessInnovations and Advances in Computing, Informatics, Systems Sciences, Networking and Engineering10.1007/978-3-319-06773-5_12(85-93)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2014
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06773-5_12
Diaz-Pace JCarlino JBlech MSoria ACampo M(2009)Assisting the synchronization of UCM-based architectural documentation with implementation2009 Joint Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture & European Conference on Software Architecture10.1109/WICSA.2009.5290801(151-160)Online publication date: Sep-2009
https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2009.5290801
Ficco MPietrantuono RRusso S(2018)Bug localization in test-driven developmentAdvances in Software Engineering10.1155/2011/4927572011(1-18)Online publication date: 11-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1155/2011/492757
Sánchez MReyes JVillalobos J(2014)Extraction and Reconstruction of Enterprise ModelsEnterprise and Organizational Modeling and Simulation10.1007/978-3-662-44860-1_1(3-20)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2014
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44860-1_1
de Silva LBalasubramaniam D(2013)PANDArchProceedings of the 7th European conference on Software Architecture10.1007/978-3-642-39031-9_21(240-248)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-39031-9_21

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