Guiding architects in selecting architectural evolution alternatives

Abstract

Although there exist methods and tools to support architecture evolution, the derivation and evaluation of alternative evolution paths are realized manually. In this paper, we introduce an approach, where architecture specification is converted to a graph representation. Based on this representation, we automatically generate possible evolution paths, evaluate quality attributes for different architectural configurations, and optimize the selection of a particular path accordingly. We illustrate our approach by modeling the software architecture evolution of a crisis management system.