Software architectural patterns in practice: an empirical study

The software architecture of a system-to-be affects the fulfillment of the desired quality requirements for this system. For building upon common knowledge and best practices, the use of architectural patterns in the software architecture has shown to be valuable. Besides their functional properties, each architectural pattern has benefits and liabilities regarding the fulfillment of quality requirements. Whereas architectural patterns contribute to the fulfillment of several quality requirements positively or negatively in a larger scale, tactics aim at improving one specific quality requirement in a more local manner. In order to tailor a software architecture for satisfying one or more specific quality requirements, tactics have to be integrated into the structure of the architectural patterns. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between several architectural patterns and performance as well as security tactics. We study how easily one tactic can be implemented in an architectural pattern. Based on our investigation, we provide mappings between the architectural patterns and tactics. Additionally, we provide a reasoning for the relations we found. To discover the relevant factors for creating reliable relations, we conduct an experiment at the EuroPLoP 2015 as a Focus Group. We describe the definition and planning of this experiment. The results will be used to define a method for creating a reliable mapping between tactics and architectural patterns. The expected target audience for our paper is software architects as well as researchers with an interest in software architectures and controlled experiments.

The Internet of Things-based systems and software allow computations anywhere at any time by interconnecting individuals, networks, services, computers and artefacts that allow autonomous systems to form digitized communities. As the blueprint for software-intensive applications, and software architecture that precise the complexity of a network’s planning, development, and changing phases to effectively and efficiently build complex IoT-driven applications. In any case, there exists no comprehensive analysis in the state of the research on the adoption of MSA for IoT systems. This study effort is needed to explore architectural concepts and practices for designing and developing IoT software to excel state-of-the-art for IoTs along with suggestions and recommendations for IoT software to the adoption of MSA to fulfil the identified gaps. A systematic analysis was coordinated, covering up the literature on existing IoT solutions by studying 140 qualitatively selected articles performed between 2005 and Jan 2020. One hundred forty articles were comprised in this SLR. The findings of this study demonstrated different research topics including software architectural styles, patterns, and models to build IoT software. This research presents cloud-based computing environments, autonomous, software-defined networking, and responsive applications, and IoT-driven agent-based systems, (1) thirteen MSA architectural and design patterns for IoTs and classification of patterns, (2) classification of software architectures for IoTs into nine main categories and their sub-categories, (3) twenty-three most investigated IoT challenges, and (4) mapping of IoT challenges with software architectural solutions. The study revealed the innovative work on IoT software architecture and trends that help in the creation and dynamic adaptation of IoT software for reusability, automation and human decision-making. The outputs of this SLR are useful in revealing many recommendations to the software industry, software engineering community, and computer sciences community with over the past 15 years of research into the adoption of MSA. This study reflects a distilled awareness of architectural practices and principles to assist researchers and practitioners in promoting information sharing software architectural roles and responsibilities for the Internet of Things software.

Software Architecture provides views and structure of the system at a high-level of abstraction. The selection of software architecture and user interface design has a great influence upon the quality of software. Our research is going in two directions; one to find the impact of layered architectural style upon maintainability of software and secondly to find the impact of user interface design with three-dimensional (3D) modeling upon usability of software. We need to choose architectural solutions based on the proven facts in order to find the desired quality attributes. The literature for the impact of architecture patterns on quality attributes shows a lack in achieving usability, that’s why we have chosen to assess a software architectural pattern along with interface design in order to achieve usability along with other quality attributes. We implemented a system “Electronic Communication Surveillance Analytic tool with 3D Modeling” based on the layered architectural style, then we evaluated this system for maintainability and usability.

Smart City Platforms are complex Information and Communication (ICT) projects where information from the physical and virtual world converge with the ultimate goal to provide better living conditions to the city’s citizens. The architecture of these platforms has been approached as an evolution of similarly large ICT projects and as a consequence the already established architectural patterns have been reused. Among them is multitenancy, a software architecture pattern that emerged in an effort to optimize the use of compute resources and minimize the operational cost of large-scale deployments. At the same time, the size and complexity of Smart City Platforms makes observability one of the key capabilities a Smart City Platform must offer in order to ensure its operational requirements are met. From the perspective of system complexity in general and observability in particular, the applicability of the multitenancy architecture pattern in Smart City Platforms is debatable as the benefits it brings may not outweigh the challenges.

SUMMARYArchitectural patterns are often applied in combination with related patterns within software architectures. The relationships among architectural patterns must be considered when applying a combination of patterns into a system; for example the way the Model‐View‐Controller uses the Observer pattern to implement the change propagation mechanism needs to be carefully designed. However, effective integration of architectural patterns within software architectures remains a challenging task. This is because the integration of any two architectural patterns can take several forms. Furthermore, existing pattern languages define generic and abstract relationships between architectural patterns without going into detail about associations among the participants of architectural patterns. In this paper, we propose to address the pattern integration issue by discovering and defining a set of pattern participants relationships that serve the purpose of effectively integrating architectural patterns. Our findings are validated through a controlled experiment, which provides significant evidence that the proposed relationships support inexperienced designers in integrating patterns. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Context. Software systems play a pervasive role in people's lives. Since ethics in software systems is hardly ever considered as a first-class entity, its support of, or hindrance to, values of users and society is usually neglected. Addressing ethics requires both to consider the context in which a software system is used, and the fact that ethical values (e.g., social, cultural and personal) are intrinsically ambiguous and subjective. Software architecture and architecture design decision making are the right levels of abstraction to both consider such a context, and support reasoning about such subjectivities. Goal. We aim to embed ethical aspects in software architecture design decision making. We have studied the state of the art in ethics for software engineering, to identify the ethical aspects influencing software architecture design. We will use the learned ethical aspects to (i) support architecture design decision making with respect to ethics through proposing methods, models, and techniques, and (ii) conduct empirical studies to evaluate them in industrial practice. Method. We will adopt a design science approach for our research which includes three phases: (i) problem understanding, (ii) solution design, and (iii) solution validation. Results. Based on our previous literature study, we build models (and techniques) embedding the ethical aspects to be used in architecture design decision making. Also, we will apply design science research to use and validate these models in a method assisting practitioners and architects to embed ethical aspects in software architecture design.

Blockchain technology has gained popularity in various applications, including finance transactions and beyond. However, developing blockchain application systems is challenging due to stringent quality requirements, such as performance, scalability, and security. Software architecture plays a critical role in realizing key quality requirements. Nonetheless, little work has been performed on software architectures for blockchain applications since blockchain application development is still a new field. This paper proposes twelve architectural patterns for blockchain application software architectures based on 400 cross-industry real-world applications available on the Internet. We determine the key components of each application guided by a blockchain application taxonomy we developed. We then identify typical architectural patterns from the interactions of these components guided by well-known software patterns, such as peer-to-peer, layered, pipe-filter, and access control. Based on the roles of these patterns, we organize them into four architectural views comprising four structural, two interactional, four transactional, and two security patterns. We describe each pattern in detail using a standard form and demonstrate the patterns through a real-world blockchain application. The use of patterns can be valuable in addressing blockchain’s unique challenges, but creativity remains essential in crafting innovative solutions. Mixing architectural patterns according to varying requirements can help developers communicate effectively.

The application of AI technology in architectural software has brought various innovations and changes to the industry. By introducing convolutional neural networks and deep neural networks, architectural design software is expected to automatically identify and generate complex architectural images, optimize the design process, and provide intelligent design assistance. Through literature research, this paper aims to discuss the specific application of CNN and DNN in parametric design and the innovation brought by them, and analyzes the application of these technologies in architectural image recognition, generation, design optimization and other aspects. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive reference for researchers in related fields and promote the innovative application of AI technology in architectural design. The application of AI technology in architectural software has brought numerous innovations and changes to the industry. By introducing convolutional neural networks and deep neural networks, architectural design software is expected to automatically identify and generate complex architectural images, optimize the design process, and provide intelligent design assistance. Through literature research, this paper aims to discuss the specific application of CNN and DNN in parametric design and the innovation brought by them; it also analyzes the application of these technologies in architectural image recognition, generation, design optimization, and other aspects. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive reference for researchers in related fields and promote the innovative application of AI technology in architectural design.

This paper presents an initial model for evaluating and improving the availability of a software architecture design. The model is implemented as a reasoning framework in the ArchE architecture expert system developed jointly with the Software Engineering Institute. To ensure continuous availability many automotive electronic control units (ECUs) employ an external watchdog running on a separate CPU to monitor the software running on the ECU. If the ECU has a failure that causes interruption of its functionality, the watchdog can detect this and reset the ECU to restore correct operation. The availability model can automatically evaluate the effectiveness of a watchdog design in the software architecture and can propose improvements to achieve better availability before implementation decisions are made. The model enables a quantitative analysis of system availability that can better guide software architecture and dependability design decisions and potentially reduce implementation and testing effort.

Software architectures are comparatively easy to comprehend, especially if there is enough documentation on the subject. The hardship will emerge when you start implementing them to solve real-world problems. This is where architectural patterns will come to your rescue. If you understand the problem at hand and if you can reasonably attach this problem to a scenario similar to a problem you have already addressed, it's rather easy to follow an approach similar to what you adopted earlier. Architecture and design patterns help you to choose and adopt solutions to problems that are similar in nature. A pattern is a reusable solution to repetitive problems of a similar nature that occur in a particular context.

This paper addresses the problem of supporting usability in the early stages of a product line architecture design. The product line used as an example is intended to support a variety of different products each with a radically different user interface. The development cycles for new products varies between three years and five years and usability is valued as an important quality attribute for each product in the line.Traditionally, usability is achieved in a product by designing according to specific usability guidelines, and then performing user tests. User interface design can be performed separately from software architecture design and prototyping, but user tests cannot be performed before detailed UI design and prototyping. If the user tests discover usability problems leading to required architectural changes, the company would not know about this until two years after the architecture design was complete. This problem was addressed by identifying a collection of 19 well known usability scenarios that require architectural support. In our example, the stakeholders for the product line prioritized three of these scenarios as key product-line scenarios for improving usability. For each of these three chosen product-line scenarios we developed an architectural responsibility pattern that provided support for the scenario. The responsibilities are expressed in terms of architectural requirements with implementation details and rationales. The responsibilities were embodied in a web based tool for the architects.The two architects for the product line developed a preliminary design and then reviewed their design against the responsibilities supporting the scenarios. The process of review took a day and the architects conservatively estimated that it saved them five weeks of effort later in the project.

In Peru, the public sector of environmental regulatory agencies still presents enormous challenges in data connectivity, due to its geographic complexity. Remote air quality monitoring stations need to achieve interoperability in order to transmit raw data from remote data loggers to centralized data centers. Proper microservices software architecture and other design patterns (API REST) were developed with the formal Attribute Driven Design (ADD) method version 3 to achieve scalability, interoperability, and proper performance. For regulatory purposes, testing and validation stages were achieved through an asynchronous data quality process that was performed in an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Then, for analytic purposes, data simulation was executed on an Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model built on real data of sulfur dioxide and particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 and 10 \(\upmu \) (year 2020). The simulation of the model and the dashboards were coded in the R language. A Peruvian government agency in charge of environmental assessment tasks and the national standards of environmental quality air are taken as a reference case.KeywordsSoftware architectureADDMicroservicesAir pollutionARIMA

Since the architecture of a software system constrains the quality attributes, the decisions taken during architectural design have a large impact on the resulting system. An architectural design method is presented that employs iterative evaluation and transformation of the software architecture in order to satisfy the quality requirements. Architecture evaluation is performed by using scenarios, simulation, mathematical modelling and experience-based reasoning. The architecture can be transformed by imposing an architectural style, imposing an architectural pattern, using a design pattern, converting a quality requirement to functionality and by distributing quality requirements. The method has evolved through its application in several industrial projects.

In 2002, Grieves defined the concept of the digital twin as a virtual instance of physical assets capable of continuously mirroring them. Ever since then, driven by remarkable industrial attention, digital twins flourished and ripened in several sectors. The notable industrial adoption has been sided by a growing interest from the software engineering community in general and the software architecture community in particular as demonstrated by the growing number of published peer-reviewed publications and proposed software architectural solutions for digital twins. In this paper, we report on the planning, execution, and results of a systematic mapping study on architecting digital twins. The study captures crucial aspects of software architectures for digital twins as types of architectural solutions, quality attributes, and architectural patterns. It supports practitioners in creating digital twins tailored to their specific needs and researchers in identifying trends and open challenges. Starting from an initial set of potentially relevant 1630 peer-reviewed publications, we selected 140 primary studies. We analysed the set of primary studies using thorough data extraction, analysis, and synthesis process. To compensate for single method limitations and reduce possible threats to conclusion validity, we discussed the results of our study with experts in the software architecture community. Based on our results, the field of software architecture for digital twins is lively and an increasing number of architectural solutions are being proposed. Although there is a lack of widely accepted reference architectural solutions for digital twins, most of them are built using a combination of the layered and service-oriented patterns and address maintainability, performance efficiency, and compatibility quality attributes.

Parallel test is a new direction for the future automatic test systems (ATS) to reduce test time and costs of the increasingly complex and time-consuming Units-Under-Test (UUTs) test. It is also one of the key technologies of the DOD's "NxTest". In fact, future ATSs must provide some parallel testing features so as to have unparalleled performance. The kernel of the Parallel ATS is Parallel TPS. At present, there are no practical architectural models or patterns for the parallel TPS's R&D. This paper introduces the parallel TPS's analysis, design and application based on software architecture, components and patterns. A brief discussion of the parallel ATS's architecture and system requirements are provided. In order to achieve high levels of reusability and flexibility, an object-oriented meta-model of the parallel TPS is presented, described with Unified Modeling Language (UML). The layered component-based framework of the Parallel TPS is designed based on that meta-model. The framework makes full uses of the design patterns and is more likely to achieve reliability and extendibility. Based on such a framework and design patterns, not only can the parallel TPS reuse both its design architecture and source code, but also can be developed more efficiently and easier to maintain and extend.