You are here : 
Software Architecture
Although there are several definitions of the concept “Software Architecture”, cf. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/definitions.html, they all try to give answers to the challenge of being able to ensure the quality of large, complex software systems built from smaller components. By quality we mean performance, dependability, scalability, evolvability etc. The approach today is generally to describe functionality at the architectural level, using modelling languages such as UML which does not allow direct assessment of the mentioned quality aspects. There is a need to ensure, at the architecture level, that the required properties for the final software system will be met. This means describing not only the interfaces between components at the syntactical level, but also how the properties of the components will combine to determine, for example, the quality of specific services offered by the system.
Our activities in this context have progressively emphasised software development at the architectural level. The research focus is shifting to models, tools and notations to describe system architectures and to compare alternative scenarios from the standpoint of their future evolution or reusability. These models and notations would relate to components through semantic descriptions which tell the system architecture what functionality the component has and how it interacts with other modules. Many of the developments would be in addition to standards aiming at platform independence, with an emphasis on application frameworks for particular types of applications.
Related calls
- IST 2002-IV.3.1 Composability and dynamic adaptability in software, systems and services.
- IST 2001-IV3.1 Software architecture