Software Architecture Design of Cloud Platforms in Automotive Domain: An Online Survey

Software architectures play an important role in the success of cloud platforms in automotive domain. To review the architecture designs in this context, it is necessary to explore different design decisions such as design styles, quality attributes (QAs), and evaluation methodologies. To this end, we aimed to investigate (i) architectural design styles, (ii) major QAs, and (iii) architecture evaluation methods that are applied in the cloud platforms in the automotive domain. We conducted an online survey to collect data from participants in industry and academia. Methodologies, such as descriptive statistics and grounded theory, were used to analyse the data. We collected 42 valid responses from participants with different roles, backgrounds, and years of experience. Considering the survey objectives, (i) event-driven and service-oriented architecture (SOA) were the most applied design styles to fulfil QAs. (ii) Availability, reliability, and security were the major QAs among other attributes. Finally, (iii) active reviews from intermediate design (ARID) and the scenario-based architecture analysis method (SAAM) were mostly applied when evaluating the architecture of cloud platforms in the automotive domain. The results of our survey show a spectrum of different applicable design styles, QAs, and evaluation methods. For selecting the set of architectural design decisions, one should consider the business scenarios and relevant quality requirements that should be supported by the cloud platforms in the automotive domain.