Towards Formalizing Assumptions on Architectural Level: A Proof-of-Concept
Abstract
While designing an architecture, architects often make assumptions about different factors like execution environment, structural
properties of the artifacts, properties of input/output data etc. Implicit and invalid assumptions have been identified as a primary reason for architectural mismatches. Such mismatches cause nightmares to the people working at the system integration phase. Today’s complex systems operate in dynamic and rapidly changing environments. Implicit assumptions in the reusable components often make it challenging to adopt the components in a changed operational domain. If not documented,
assumptions are often forgotten and it is both difficult and expensive to find them out from previously built software. This paper aims to formally capture assumptions at the architecture level so that they can be checked
automatically throughout the system development. Automated checking
of assumptions would facilitate a practicable assumption management system for complex and large-scale software system development with smooth integration and evolution.
Publisher
Departmen of Computer Science and Engineering
View/ Open
Date
2012-09-10Author
Al Mamun, Abdullah
Tichy, Matthias
Hansson, Jörgen
Editor
Pareto, Lars
Keywords
software architecture
assumptions
formal specification
integration
evolution
Publication type
report
ISSN
1654-4870
Series/Report no.
Research Reports in Software Engineering and Management
2012:02
Language
eng