An Executable Design Decision Representation Using Model Transformations

Abstract

Design decisions are often tacit knowledge of an architecture and consequently they are easily lost during software evolution, a phenomenon known as knowledge vaporization. As a countermeasure design decisions can be documented explicitly. However, documenting design decision is expensive because they need to be captured in addition to the changes in the architecture. We propose an executable representation for design decisions using model transformations which is independent of a particular component model or architectural description language. As a result we get all the advantages of explicitly captured design decisions such as the potential to reduce knowledge vaporization while preventing the high capturing cost since the corresponding architectural change can be computed automatically. The approach is illustrated by a case study in the context of embedded software architectures.