Refactor Software architecture using graph transformation approach

Abstract

Software in use needs to be adapted to changing requirements and this involves changing the architecture of the system. Software architecture usually suffers from problems known as architectural bad smells, e.g. dependency cycles, duplicate design artifacts and so on. Architecture refactoring can be considered as the first step in the quest of maintaining system quality during evolution, and a process of eliminating architectural bad smells. In this respect, to improve quality and decrease complexity, software artifacts need to be restructured and refactored. The impact of refactoring on the architecture level can be very useful by leading to the architectural stability of the system, and can keep software architecture clean, easy to maintain and easy to evolve. In this paper, we introduce an approach for refactoring component based software architecture artifacts using graph transformations; we use a specific graph transformation tool called AGG (Attribute Graph Grammar) in order to get rid of architectural bad smells.