Rationale, decisions and alternatives traceability for architecture design

  • Authors:

  • Fabian Gilson;Vincent Englebert

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Namur, Belgium;University of Namur, Belgium

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Software Architecture: Companion Volume
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

When designing information systems, architects must often deal with many requirements and constraints. Also, many parties may collaborate during design phases. Therefore, the rationale and decisions sustaining the architecture model can be lost if not documented appropriately. However, in order to understand and maintain these systems, we need to have a clear picture of the rationale and decisions behind their designs. To tackle this problem, we propose a design approach combining architecturally significant requirement modelling and architecture modelling. Constraint and Requirement are attached to architectural constructs. And any modification in the architecture model resulting from a decision made in the requirement model is recorded as a model transformation. We present both modelling formalisms and explain how we combine them to increase the traceability of the rationale, design decisions and alternatives as well as the maintainability of information systems.