An architecture viewpoint for modeling dynamically configurable software systems

Abstract

Current software systems are rarely static and need to be able to change their topology and behavior to the changing context. To support the communication among stakeholders, guide the design decisions, and analyze the architecture it is important to model the adaptability concerns explicitly. In practice, architectural concerns are represented using architecture views that are derived from the corresponding architecture viewpoints. Different software architecture viewpoints have been introduced but runtime adaptability has not been broadly considered and remains implicit in the architecture views. In this paper we introduce the adaptability viewpoint that can be used for modeling dynamically configurable software architectures. We illustrate the viewpoint for a demand-driven supply chain management system.