An iterative framework for software architecture recovery: An experience report

Abstract

Both architecture recovery and architecture evaluation play an important role in the area of software reverse-engineering. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a framework for incremental and iterative application of automated architecture recovery (using SWAG Kit) and architecture analysis (using SAAM.) We conclude that SWAG Kit helps in generating a low-level architecture that forms the basis of analysis, while SAAM helps in deriving from this a deeply understood conceptual architecture. The process is iterative, where SAAM analysis helps refine the parameters fed to SWAG Kit, in turn leading to a superior architecture for further analysis. We have applied this process to the extraction of the architectures of three open source compression tools, and we report on the strengths and weaknesses of the approach that this case study exposed. Over all, we conclude that the framework allowed us to understand the software architectures more deeply than would have been possible with the software architecture recovery process alone. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.