ADAM: Architecture Discovery and Analysis Method

ADAM focuses on the following concrete results:

Discovering the software architecture from the implementation, and analyzing quality risks, in particular, risks related to performance, testability (with emphasis on unit testing) , and maintainability.
Verifying the structural and behavioral constraints of the specified architectural style with respect to its implementation.
Identifying and analyzing the test architecture, and thereby improving our understanding of relationships between software architectures and testing.
Understanding and analyzing organizational aspects of the system under study.
Build-in quality instead of test-in quality – some recommendations.

Introduction

Reverse architecting consists of creating explicit architectural models of an existing system, the as-built architecture. Traditional reverse engineering techniques can be applied to extract information from software artefacts. Appropriate abstractions must be made to obtain the information at an architectural level. (Forward) architecting is embedded in most software engineering processes. Reverse architecting is rarely applied in a structured development approach. In this project we investigate different aspects to ultimately achieve a structured software development process in which architecture is more embedded. We can classify our research questions into the three interleaved areas.

Verification of Architectural Design Rules
Discovery of Software Architectures and Analyses of Quality Properties
Organizational Aspects

Results

Software Architecture Discovery for Testability, Performance, and Maintainability of Industrial Systems Thesis (pdf)
Architecture Metrics for Nasa, Dharmalingam Ganesan, Rene Krikhaar, Mikael Lindvall and Chris Verhoef

Case studies

The ADAM project works closely together with industry. Cases to validate research results come from industry and open source projects:

Market Maker’s Software Product Line for web-based stock market systems
Hitachi’s Engine Control System (ECS)
Ricoh’s reusable user interface component (UIC)
Digital Camera
Ricoh’s Multi-Function Peripherals (MFPs)
Testo’s climate and temperature measurement product line
Software for farming trucks
Electrical measurement embedded systems
BioFortis, Maryland using Cranefoot – an open source Pedigree visualization framework
BioFortis, Maryland using Madeline is an open source Pedigree visualization framework
NASA’s Core Flight Software Product Line (CFS)
NASA’s GMSEC Product Line
Space Network (SN)
Space Network Access System (SNAS)
Cold Chain Information System (CCIS)
Web-based Medical Information management system
Archivex, Maryland – Laboratory Inventory Management System
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Contributors

Name	Affiliation	Phone
Prof. Dr. C. Verhoef	VU	+31 20 5987760	Thesis advisor
Dr. R.L. Krikhaar	VU	+31 20 5987779	Co-Thesis advisor
Dharmalingam Ganesan	Fraunhofer	+1 240 487 2915	Ph.D. candidate
Dr. Mikael Lindvall	Fraunhofer	+1 240 487 2915	Fraunhofer advisor

This project is supported by Fraunhofer, VU University Amsterdam and Quality Catch .

Key Publications

Dharmalingam Ganesan, Mikael Lindvall, Rance Cleaveland, Raoul Jetley, Paul Jones, Yi Zhang. Architecture Reconstruction and Analysis of Medical Device Software. WICSA 2011 pdf
Dharmalingam Ganesan, Mikael Lindvall, Christopher Ackermann, David McComas, Maureen Bartholomew. Verifying Architectural Design Rules of the Flight Software Product Line. IEEE International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2009): 161-170, see Verifying Architectural Design Rules of the Software Product Line. pdf
Dharmalingam Ganesan, Mikael Lindvall David McComas, Maureen Bartholomew, Steve Slegel, Barbara Medina. Architecture-based Unit Testing of the Flight Software Product Line. To appear in IEEE International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2010), see Architecture-based Unit Testing of the Flight Software Product Line. pdf
Dharmalingam Ganesan, Thorsten Keuler, Yutaro Nishimura. Architecture Compliance Checking at Run-time. International Journal on Information & Software Technology (IST 2009), 51(11): 1586-1600, see Architecture Compliance Checking at Run-time. pdf
Dharmalingam Ganesan, Mikael Lindvall, Lamont Ruley, Robert Wiegand, Vuong Ly, Tina Tsui. Architectural Analysis of Systems based on the Publisher-Subscriber Style. IEEE International Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE 2010), see Architectural Analysis of Systems based on the Publisher-Subscriber Style. pdf
Dharmalingam Ganesan, Dirk Muthig, Jens Knodel, Kentaro Yoshimura. Discovering Organizational Aspects from the Source Code History Log during the Product Line Planning Phase--A Case Study. IEEE International Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE 2006): 211-220, see Discovering Organizational Aspects from the Source Code History Log during the Product Line Planning Phase--A Case Study. pdf
Dharmalingam Ganesan, Mikael Lindvall, Monica Ron. External Dependencies-driven Architecture Discovery and Analysis of Implemented Systems. Submitted to ACM Transactions on Software Engineering, see External Dependencies-driven Architecture Discovery and Analysis of Implemented Systems.
Dharmalingam Ganesan, Mikael Lindvall, David McComas, Maureen Bartholomew, Steve Slegel, Barbara Medina, Rene Krikhaar, Chris Verhoef, An Analysis of Unit Tests of a Flight Software Product Line, Under Review Science of Computer Programming, pdf