Supporting architectural design decisions evolution through model driven engineering

Abstract

Architectural design decisions (i.e., those decisions made when architecting software systems) are considered an essential piece of knowledge to be carefully documented and maintained. As any other artifact, architectural design decisions may evolve, having an impact on other design decisions, or on related artifacts (like requirements and architectural elements). It is therefore important to document and analyze the impact of an evolving decision on other related decisions or artifacts. In this work we propose an approach based on a notation-independent metamodel that becomes a means for systematically defining traceability links, enabling inter-decision and extra-decision evolution impact analysis. The purpose of such an analysis is to check the presence of inconsistencies that may occur during evolution. An Eclipse plugin has been realized to implement the approach. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.