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Reengineering component-based software systems with Archimetrix

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Abstract

Many software development, planning, or analysis tasks require an up-to-date software architecture documentation. However, this documentation is often outdated, unavailable, or at least not available as a formal model which analysis tools could use. Reverse engineering methods try to fill this gap. However, as they process the system’s source code, they are easily misled by design deficiencies (e.g., violations of component encapsulation) which leaked into the code during the system’s evolution. Despite the high impact of design deficiencies on the quality of the resulting software architecture models, none of the surveyed related works is able to cope with them during the reverse engineering process. Therefore, we have developed the Archimetrix approach which semiautomatically recovers the system’s concrete architecture in a formal model while simultaneously detecting and removing design deficiencies. We have validated Archimetrix on a case study system and two implementation variants of the CoCoME benchmark system. Results show that the removal of relevant design deficiencies leads to an architecture model which more closely matches the system’s conceptual architecture.

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Notes

  1. The duration of the analysis steps was measured on a machine with an Intel Core i7-2620M processor with 2.7 GHz and 6 GB RAM.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Oleg Travkin for his contributions in the development of Archimetrix. We would also like to thank Christian Heinzemann, Dietrich Travkin, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. This work was partially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Collaborative Research Centre “On-The-Fly Computing” (CRC 901).

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  1. Software Engineering Group, Heinz Nixdorf Institute, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany

    Markus von Detten, Marie Christin Platenius & Steffen Becker

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  1. Markus von Detten
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  2. Marie Christin Platenius
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Correspondence to Markus von Detten.

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Communicated by Prof. Dr. Dorina Petriu and Dr. Jens Happe.

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von Detten, M., Platenius, M.C. & Becker, S. Reengineering component-based software systems with Archimetrix. Softw Syst Model 13, 1239–1268 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-013-0341-9

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