Functional Flow Diagram(FFD): Semantics for evolving software

Abstract

In the current scenario, component-based system development approaches have led to reuse based development and espousal of large-scale software systems. To analyze the design of such systems and assess its performance is not a trivial task. Model-based testing tools have maturely signified the success of functional testing of such systems. An urge to spawn the testing of non-functional behavior from development models is further expected. Reliability assessment is one such aspect. However, the design models have not been employed in the prevailing non-functional assessment techniques. Assuming the strength of such models and the need to devise assessment measures, an attempt to formalize architectural models to this context is presented in the paper. Our paper focuses on deriving an intermediate notation for non-functional evaluation of the software systems. The concept of modeling, annotating constraints and making a visual of component interaction patterns is the scope of the work. The new model thus generated has features similar to the System's Engineering “Functional Flow Diagram” and will be used with same definitions for the software components.