Towards suitable description of reference architectures
Due to the increasing size and complexity of many current software systems, the architectural design of these systems has become a considerately complicated task. In this scenario, reference architectures have already proven to be very relevant to support the architectural design of systems in diver...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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PeerJ Inc.
2021-03-01
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| Series: | PeerJ Computer Science |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://peerj.com/articles/cs-392.pdf |
| _version_ | 1818336843377147904 |
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| author | Pedro Henrique Dias Valle Lina Garcés Tiago Volpato Silverio Martínez-Fernández Elisa Yumi Nakagawa |
| author_facet | Pedro Henrique Dias Valle Lina Garcés Tiago Volpato Silverio Martínez-Fernández Elisa Yumi Nakagawa |
| author_sort | Pedro Henrique Dias Valle |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Due to the increasing size and complexity of many current software systems, the architectural design of these systems has become a considerately complicated task. In this scenario, reference architectures have already proven to be very relevant to support the architectural design of systems in diverse critical application domains, such as health, avionics, transportation, and the automotive sector. However, these architectures are described in many different approaches, such as using textual description, informal models, and even modeling languages as UML. Hence, practitioners are faced with a difficult decision of the better approaches to describing reference architectures. The main contribution of this work is to depict a detailed panorama containing the state of the art (from the literature) and state of the practice (based on existing reference architectures) of approaches for describing reference architectures. For this, we firstly examined the existing approaches (e.g., processes, methods, models, and modeling languages) and compared them concerning completeness and applicability. We also examined four well-known, successful reference architectures (AUTOSAR, ARC-IT, IIRA, and AXMEDIS) in view of the approaches used to describe them. As a result, there exists a misalignment between the state of the art and state of the practice, requiring an engagement of the software architecture community, through research collaboration of academia and industry, to propose more suitable means to describe reference architectures and, as a consequence, promoting the sustainability of these architectures. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-13T14:45:46Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-5eb0652000114af59e98fc824f9b3e2a |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2376-5992 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-13T14:45:46Z |
| publishDate | 2021-03-01 |
| publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PeerJ Computer Science |
| spelling | doaj.art-5eb0652000114af59e98fc824f9b3e2a2022-12-21T23:41:29ZengPeerJ Inc.PeerJ Computer Science2376-59922021-03-017e39210.7717/peerj-cs.392Towards suitable description of reference architecturesPedro Henrique Dias Valle0Lina Garcés1Tiago Volpato2Silverio Martínez-Fernández3Elisa Yumi Nakagawa4University of São Paulo (USP), São Carlos, BrazilFederal University of Itajubá (UNIFEI), Itajubá, BrazilUniversity of São Paulo (USP), São Carlos, BrazilUniversitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC-BarcelonaTech), Barcelona, SpainUniversity of São Paulo (USP), São Carlos, BrazilDue to the increasing size and complexity of many current software systems, the architectural design of these systems has become a considerately complicated task. In this scenario, reference architectures have already proven to be very relevant to support the architectural design of systems in diverse critical application domains, such as health, avionics, transportation, and the automotive sector. However, these architectures are described in many different approaches, such as using textual description, informal models, and even modeling languages as UML. Hence, practitioners are faced with a difficult decision of the better approaches to describing reference architectures. The main contribution of this work is to depict a detailed panorama containing the state of the art (from the literature) and state of the practice (based on existing reference architectures) of approaches for describing reference architectures. For this, we firstly examined the existing approaches (e.g., processes, methods, models, and modeling languages) and compared them concerning completeness and applicability. We also examined four well-known, successful reference architectures (AUTOSAR, ARC-IT, IIRA, and AXMEDIS) in view of the approaches used to describe them. As a result, there exists a misalignment between the state of the art and state of the practice, requiring an engagement of the software architecture community, through research collaboration of academia and industry, to propose more suitable means to describe reference architectures and, as a consequence, promoting the sustainability of these architectures.https://peerj.com/articles/cs-392.pdfSoftware architectureReference architectureArchitecture description |
| spellingShingle | Pedro Henrique Dias Valle Lina Garcés Tiago Volpato Silverio Martínez-Fernández Elisa Yumi Nakagawa Towards suitable description of reference architectures PeerJ Computer Science Software architecture Reference architecture Architecture description |
| title | Towards suitable description of reference architectures |
| title_full | Towards suitable description of reference architectures |
| title_fullStr | Towards suitable description of reference architectures |
| title_full_unstemmed | Towards suitable description of reference architectures |
| title_short | Towards suitable description of reference architectures |
| title_sort | towards suitable description of reference architectures |
| topic | Software architecture Reference architecture Architecture description |
| url | https://peerj.com/articles/cs-392.pdf |
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