A Framework and Taxonomy for Characterizing the Applicability of Software Architecture Recovery Approaches: A Tertiary‐Mapping Study

Software: Practice and Experience Pub Date : 2024-07-17 DOI:10.1002/spe.3364

Abdul Qayum, Mengqi Zhang, Simon Colreavy, Muslim Chochlov, Jim Buckley, Dayi Lin, Ashish Rajendra Sai

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Abstract

SummarySoftware architecture assists developers in addressing non‐functional requirements and in maintaining, debugging, and upgrading their software systems. Consequently, consistency between the designed architecture and the implemented software system itself is important; without this consistency the non‐functional requirements targeted may not be addressed and architectural documentation may mis‐direct maintenance efforts that target the associated code‐base. But often, when software is initially implemented or subsequently evolved, the designed architecture and software architecture become inconsistent, with the implemented structure degraded due to issues like developer time‐pressures, or ambiguous communication of the designed architecture. In such cases, Software Architecture Recovery (SAR) or consistency approaches can be applied to reconstruct the architecture of the software system and possibly to compare it to/re‐align it with the designed architecture. Many SAR approaches have been proposed in the research. However, choosing an appropriate architecture recovery approach for software systems is still an open issue. Consequently, this research aims to conduct a tertiary‐mapping study based on available secondary studies of architecture recovery approaches, to uncover important characteristics, towards the selection of appropriate SAR approaches. This research has aggregated 13 secondary studies and 10 primary studies beyond 2020 from 5 databases and, in doing so, identified 111 architecture recovery approaches. Based on these approaches, a taxonomy, containing nine main SAR‐selection categories is proposed and a framework (in the form of a supporting tool to help developers select an appropriate SAR approach) has been developed. Finally, this research identifies six potential open research gaps related to the underlying research that could be helpful for guiding research in the future.

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表征软件架构恢复方法适用性的框架和分类标准：三级映射研究

摘要软件架构可帮助开发人员解决非功能性需求，并对软件系统进行维护、调试和升级。因此，设计的体系结构与实施的软件系统本身之间的一致性非常重要；没有这种一致性，所针对的非功能性需求可能无法得到满足，体系结构文档可能会错误地引导针对相关代码库的维护工作。但是，在软件的初始实施或后续演进过程中，设计架构和软件架构往往会出现不一致，由于开发人员的时间压力或设计架构的沟通不明确等问题，导致实施结构退化。在这种情况下，可以采用软件架构恢复（SAR）或一致性方法来重建软件系统的架构，并将其与设计架构进行比较/重新对齐。研究中提出了许多 SAR 方法。然而，为软件系统选择合适的架构恢复方法仍是一个未决问题。因此，本研究旨在基于现有的架构恢复方法二次研究，进行一次三级映射研究，以发现重要特征，从而选择合适的 SAR 方法。本研究从 5 个数据库中汇总了 13 项二次研究和 10 项 2020 年以后的主要研究，并在此过程中确定了 111 种架构恢复方法。在这些方法的基础上，提出了包含九个主要 SAR 选择类别的分类法，并开发了一个框架（以辅助工具的形式，帮助开发人员选择合适的 SAR 方法）。最后，本研究确定了与基础研究相关的六个潜在的开放式研究缺口，这将有助于指导未来的研究工作。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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Software: Practice and Experience

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