Assuring object-oriented architecture

Abstract

"Architecture is the fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles governing its design and evolution" - ANSI/IEEE Std 1471-2000. Getting the architecture of a software system right is increasingly recognized as crucial to that system's success. Effective software architects must not only make appropriate architectural decisions, but also assure that the final system correctly embodies those decisions. This task is especially difficult for object-oriented systems, for two reasons. First, much of software architecture's design terminology derives from hardware circuit diagrams, which might be a reasonable match for C programs but are a far cry from today's highly dynamic object architectures. Second, the same facilities that make object-oriented software robust and flexible-dynamism, aliasing, inheritance, and reentrancy-greatly complicate the assurance of architectural properties. This talk explores architectural abstractions for object-oriented programs, and approaches for recognizing and assuring those abstractions in object-oriented code. Studying a number of real-world systems and frameworks provides insight into what kinds of structural and behavioral properties are important in object-oriented architectures. I will discuss how common approaches to assuring software architecture, while successful in other settings, are often incompatible with essential object-oriented architectural practices. Overcoming these incompatibilities requires new abstractions both for expressing and assuring software architectures. Several recently developed abstractions show promise in capturing architectural design intent, but a number of challenges to realizing the full potential of object-oriented architecture remain. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.