Architectural design for a wireless environment

Abstract

Services provided by dependable systems require fulfillment of precise quality goals guaranteeing the overall system's quality. Nevertheless, specification and measure of quality properties during software development, derived from nonfunctional requirements, is still an open problem. Architectural design is included in general frameworks for software development. However, rationale for a repeatable process is not always explicit. This work proposes a quality-based approach to architectural design focusing on the problem to be solved. The problem is described in terms of its functional and nonfunctional requirements. A quality model is used to specify the quality properties related with the problem's domain. At each step of the process, an architectural pattern is chosen on the basis of a quality property addressed by the pattern. Mobile environments based on wireless networks support ubiquitous access to distant resources. Software design techniques should provide sound guidelines for the safe construction of applications in these environments. The proposed process is applied to a collaborative work system in a mobile ad hoc network. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.