Challenges on the Relationship between Architectural Patterns and Quality Attributes

Abstract

Among other knowledge, software architecture de-sign decision-making relies on the relation between architecturalpatterns and quality attributes (QAs). However, this relation isoften implicit, or in the best case informally and partially defined. This leads to sub-optimal understanding of the impact of thearchitecture design on the desired level of quality. In this work, we aim to shed light on the relation patterns-QAs in the context of an important architectural mechanism, architectural tactics. Tactics are design decisions that address aspecific quality attribute. In turn, the implementation of a tactichas a different impact according to the used pattern. From a previous systematic literature review, we selected andanalyzed 13 primary studies with a clear focus on tactics. Fromour analysis, we extracted three overarching challenges on therelationship patterns-QAs that are yet unsolved by research. The essence of these challenges suggests that further researchis needed to identify a clear and precise link between thefunctional nature of architectural elements and non-functionalquality properties.