It took some time to actually post it here, but I am very pleased to say that the paper "Dependency Proļ¬les for Software Architecture Evaluations" by Bouwers, van Deursen and Visser has been accepted at the Early Research Achievements-track of the 27th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance.
Before dumping the abstract I want to confess that I have given in and created a twitter-account. As you might have noticed, my updates have been infrequently at best. This is mainly because it takes me a long time before I start writing. Let's see whether this twitter-thing makes this easier!
Abstract:
In this paper we introduce the concept of a “dependency profile”, a system level metric aimed at quantifying the level of encapsulation and independence within a system. We verify that these profiles are suitable to be used in an evaluation context by inspecting the dependency profiles for a repository of almost 100 systems. Furthermore we outline the steps we are taking to validate the usefulness and applicability of the proposed profiles.
WICSA 2011
And yet another publication to announce! I am very happy to tell you all that the paper "Quantifying the Analyzability of Software Architectures" by Bouwers, Correia, van Deursen and Visser has been accepted at the 9th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture!
Abstract:
The decomposition of a software system into components is a major decision in any software architecture, having a strong influence on many of its quality aspects. A system’s analyzability, in particular, is influenced by its decomposition into components. But into how many components should a system be decomposed to achieve optimal analyzability? And how should the elements of the system be distributed over those components?
In this paper, we set out to find answers to these questions with the support of a large repository of industrial and opensource software systems. Based on our findings, we designed a metric which we call Component Balance. In a case study we show that the metric provides pertinent results in various evaluation scenarios. In addition, we report on an empirical study that demonstrates that the metric is strongly correlated with ratings for analyzability as given by experts.
(and yes, maybe twitter is not such a bad idea if I keep on writing these short posts :)
Abstract:
The decomposition of a software system into components is a major decision in any software architecture, having a strong influence on many of its quality aspects. A system’s analyzability, in particular, is influenced by its decomposition into components. But into how many components should a system be decomposed to achieve optimal analyzability? And how should the elements of the system be distributed over those components?
In this paper, we set out to find answers to these questions with the support of a large repository of industrial and opensource software systems. Based on our findings, we designed a metric which we call Component Balance. In a case study we show that the metric provides pertinent results in various evaluation scenarios. In addition, we report on an empirical study that demonstrates that the metric is strongly correlated with ratings for analyzability as given by experts.
(and yes, maybe twitter is not such a bad idea if I keep on writing these short posts :)
SQM 2011
Yes I know, it is a bit late. However, I am still very pleased that the paper Preparing for a Literature Survey of Software Architecture using Formal Concept Analysis by L. Couto, J.N. Oliveira, M.A. Ferreira and E. Bouwers has been accepted (and presented) at the Fifth International Workshop on Software Quality and Maintainability!
The abstract:
The scientific literature on Software Architecture(SA) is extensive and dense. With no preparation, surveying this literature can be a daunting task for novices in the field. This paper resorts to the technique of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) in organizing and structuring such a body of knowledge. We start by surveying a set of 38 papers bearing in mind the following questions: “What are the most supported definitions of software architecture?”, “What are the most popular research topics in software architecture?”, “What are the most relevant quality attributes of a software architecture?” and “What are the topics that researchers point out as being more interesting to explore in the future?”. To answer these questions we classify each paper with appropriate keywords and apply FCA to such a classification. FCA allows us to structure our survey in the form of lattices of concepts which give evidence of main relationships involved. We believe our results will help in guiding a more comprehensive, in-depth study of the field, to be carried out in the future.
The abstract:
The scientific literature on Software Architecture(SA) is extensive and dense. With no preparation, surveying this literature can be a daunting task for novices in the field. This paper resorts to the technique of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) in organizing and structuring such a body of knowledge. We start by surveying a set of 38 papers bearing in mind the following questions: “What are the most supported definitions of software architecture?”, “What are the most popular research topics in software architecture?”, “What are the most relevant quality attributes of a software architecture?” and “What are the topics that researchers point out as being more interesting to explore in the future?”. To answer these questions we classify each paper with appropriate keywords and apply FCA to such a classification. FCA allows us to structure our survey in the form of lattices of concepts which give evidence of main relationships involved. We believe our results will help in guiding a more comprehensive, in-depth study of the field, to be carried out in the future.
A new year, a new set of chances
At the end of the old year (or the start of the new year) there is usually some time to clean up the old stuff and get around to the things you keep postponing.
In my case, I finally got around to put the slides of my Landelijk Architectuur Congres (National Architecture Congress) presentation on-line. Currently the slides are in Dutch, but fortunately I got an invitation to present the work to an English audience. A nice chance (and 'stick-behind-the-door') for me to translate the slides.
And although it might be a bit late (the deadline is just around the corner), the new year still offers you a chance to participate in the Second Workshop on Managing Technical Debt 2011, to be held on the 23th of May.
It might be fun to try to explain what 'Technical Debt' is and why you should care about it, but I believe others already did this better than I could. So let me just point you to this post of Philippe Kruchten, which contains all the information and links you need to get started. Looking forward to your contributions!
In my case, I finally got around to put the slides of my Landelijk Architectuur Congres (National Architecture Congress) presentation on-line. Currently the slides are in Dutch, but fortunately I got an invitation to present the work to an English audience. A nice chance (and 'stick-behind-the-door') for me to translate the slides.
And although it might be a bit late (the deadline is just around the corner), the new year still offers you a chance to participate in the Second Workshop on Managing Technical Debt 2011, to be held on the 23th of May.
It might be fun to try to explain what 'Technical Debt' is and why you should care about it, but I believe others already did this better than I could. So let me just point you to this post of Philippe Kruchten, which contains all the information and links you need to get started. Looking forward to your contributions!