Software architecture analysis

Abstract

The Arch project is investigating methods and tools for understanding, specifying, controlling and improving the subsystem architecture of large so~are systems. This paper focuses on one of Arch’s capabilities, critiquing modularity. It discusses the relationship of modularity and architecture to configuration management, describes Arch’s information-sharing measure and its heuristic method, maverick analysis, for spotting poor information-hiding, and gives examples of using Arch tofind and analyze problem modules. Then it describes a case study in which Arch was used to analyze a “real”, production software system, including the real developer’s responses to Arch’s analysis.