Architecture reconstruction is the reverse engineering process that aims at recovering design decisions that have been made about the architecture of a software system. To make it a successful activity, we need to identify the proper architecturally significant information and extract it from the available artifacts. Our tutorial addresses problems such as identifying architecturally significant information, assessment of software architecture, extraction and analysis of information, visualization. We focus on the reconstruction method for software product families, give an overview of the available tools and give numerous hints on practical application. We introduce the key notions about software architecture description and place architecture reconstruction activities in a practical context. We present our architecture reconstruction method, with a strong emphasis on its practical aspects and the tools supporting it. Architectural assessment, extraction and analysis of architecturally significant information are the key phases of our approach. Examples from real development cases and small group exercises help the audience grasp the methods and show their application in a practical environment. We derive our experience mainly from the embedded telecommunications systems domain. However, we believe that the same general principles can be applied to other domains. The tutorial addresses software engineers and project managers that are involved in the development of complex software systems. It is also useful for business developers who need to make decision about the evolution and maintenance of complex software product families.

Bio-sketch

 

Alessandro "mac" Maccari is a Technical Architect at the Nokia Web Service Technologies team. He has been active in the field with internal specification work as well as customer pilots since 2002. Previously, he has been a researcher in the Software Architecture field. He is currently a PhD student in the field of Software architecture, and has over 20 publications, including a co-authored book.