ETAK: tailoring architectural evolution by (re-)using architectural knowledge

When an architect is faced with architectural evolution needs, he can opt to apply an existing evolution pattern. This is useful for well-known evolutions but at times is only partly sufficient. When he faces more specific evolutions, the architect needs to rely on expertise and intuition to extend the evolution beyond the pattern, a risky, error-prone evolution activity. In particular when the architect wants to assess the relevance of potential evolutions, he has no systematic assistance for analysing architectural knowledge. We propose ETAK as a framework for providing such automated assistance. ETAK allows the architect to define architectural traits he has in mind and the specific architectural knowledge he wants to consider. ETAK establishes the relevance of these traits for the new architecture, which can be used to decide whether to include them. We thus propose tailored architectural evolutions, drawing on intuition of the architect and architectural knowledge.