Capturing and Replaying Architectural Knowledge through Derivational Analogy

The architecture definition activity of complex systems is intellectually intensive consuming much of the design time and budget. Rather than being regarded merely as a collection of views, software architecture can also be regarded as a collection of design decisions, such as tactics and design patterns, which are embodied in the architectural process. Therefore, the reuse of the architecture would be naive if only carried out based on the architectural views, i.e. without regard to the design reasoning behind the architectural process. In this paper we review an approach to defining new software architectures through the use of derivational analogy, i.e. by replaying the process, sequence of decisions, behind the definition of a previously defined architecture. We conclude that, without the design reasoning, the reuse of the architecture would be a risky process, which can violate original design assumptions and dependencies.