Software Architecture for Product Families: Principles and Practice - Hardcover

Jazayeri, Mehdi; Ran, A. C. M.; Van Der Linden, Frank; Ran, Alexander

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0201699672 ISBN 13: 9780201699678

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 2000

Synopsis

"The section on architectural concepts is superb." --Paul Clements, Software Engineering Institute "The authors present a very knowledgeable presentation about software development and software architecture. There are good techniques here that would interest other software architects and designers." --Henry McNair, Hewlett-Packard The fast pace of modern business is creating new challenges for software engineers. These professionals are faced with the daunting assignment of delivering more robust software for less money--and in less time. In addition, many must now learn to efficiently develop software for a suite, or family, of products. Research has shown that a product-line approach to creating software can be achieved, but where does a software practitioner turn for information and guidance on such a major, potentially difficult transition? Using an example-based approach, Software Architecture for Product Families provides the software engineering community with a valuable resource for devising and, more importantly, implementing a successful product-family architecture. The concepts and technologies set forth in this book are based on the authors' cutting-edge experiences with the ARES (Architectural Reasoning for Embedded Systems) Project, a major European research initiative that proved that software reuse can be attained more easily through a product-family approach. This book simplifies the intimidating process of learning how to design software for product-line engineering by focusing on three key aspects of architectural practice: architecture description, assessment, and recovery. Practitioners will learn how to pinpoint the source of their problems, focus on the big picture, and see what kinds of problems can be addressed with the product-family approach. With this book as a guide, software developers will be able to implement a sound product-family architecture that will result in better quality, reduced costs, and decreased time to market.

About this title

About the Author

Mehdi Jazayeri is a professor of computer science and heads the Distributed Systems Group at the Technical University of Vienna. He has extensive experience in industry, and has held both technical and management positions at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Synapse Computer Corporation, and TRW Vidar. He has co-authored textbooks on software engineering, programming languages, and software processes.

Alexander Ran is a Principal Scientist of Software Architecture at Nokia Research Center, where he leads research projects, provides consulting, and conducts architectural assessments of products for Nokia Business Units. Alexander is a contributor to the first and second PLoP books. He served as program co-chair of the First Working IFIP Conference on Software Architecture and the First Software Product Lines Conference. He was an invited speaker at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) and a keynote speaker on product families at the Symposium on Software Reusability.

Frank van der Linden has been a researcher with Philips Research Laboratories for 15 years. Frank has broad experience in the component architecture of diverse electronic consumer and professional products. He recently moved to Philips Medical Systems, and is the editor of the proceedings for the special workshop on Software Architecture for Product Families being offered at ICSE.

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From the Back Cover

--Paul Clements, Software Engineering Institute

"The authors present a very knowledgeable presentation about software development and software architecture. There are good techniques here that would interest other software architects and designers." --Henry McNair, Hewlett-Packard

The fast pace of modern business is creating new challenges for software engineers. These professionals are faced with the daunting assignment of delivering more robust software for less money--and in less time. In addition, many must now learn to efficiently develop software for a suite, or family, of products. Research has shown that a product-line approach to creating software can be achieved, but where does a software practitioner turn for information and guidance on such a major, potentially difficult transition?

Using an example-based approach, Software Architecture for Product Families provides the software engineering community with a valuable resource for devising and, more importantly, implementing a successful product-family architecture. The concepts and technologies set forth in this book are based on the authors' cutting-edge experiences with the ARES (Architectural Reasoning for Embedded Systems) Project, a major European research initiative that proved that software reuse can be attained more easily through a product-family approach.

This book simplifies the intimidating process of learning how to design software for product-line engineering by focusing on three key aspects of architectural practice: architecture description, assessment, and recovery. Practitioners will learn how to pinpoint the source of their problems, focus on the big picture, and see what kinds of problems can be addressed with the product-family approach. With this book as a guide, software developers will be able to implement a sound product-family architecture that will result in better quality, reduced costs, and decreased time to market. 0201699672B04062001

From the Inside Flap

This book presents a view of software architecture for product families. It

is addressed to researchers, engineers, and managers involved in the development

of software-intensive products. The book is based primarily on the experience

gained in the project ARES (Architectural Reasoning for Embedded Systems), carried

out by six partners, funded by the European Commission. The project was concerned

with the application of software architecture research results to practical

problems faced by the industrial partners.

The three industrial partners shared similar problems in coping with the management

of software product evolution in the presence of increasing feature requirements

and decreasing time-to-market requirements. Software architecture, particularly

applied to product families, appeared to offer some solutions, but there were

many approaches and methodologies from which to choose. The goal of the project

was to evaluate promising software architecture research results by applying

them to some typical software evolution problems in industrial settings. One

of the mottos of the project was "industry as laboratory."

The project was carried out by three industrial and three university partners:

Nokia Research Center, Philips Corporate Research, Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Corporate

Research, Technical University of Vienna, Imperial College of Science and Technology

(London), and Polytechnic University of Madrid. During the project, we produced

many results that had impact on the industrial partners (in terms of practice)

and the university partners (in terms of curriculum development), as well as

a large number of publications and presentations in scientific conferences and

journals. Rather than collecting the many results already presented in journals

and conferences reporting on progress in the ARES project, we decided to integrate

the results gained in the project and present a comprehensive view of the approaches

we followed, of what worked and what didn't.

The purpose of this book is to bring some of the salient results together to

make the big picture accessible to a wider audience. In short, the book attempts

to give the reader the perspective gained by the project partners after three

years of experience in applying research results to practical problems of software

architecture for software-intensive systems. All chapters have been written

specifically for this book.

The Introduction introduces the background of the project and the case study-based

approach that we chose for running the project. It explains how the project

came about and how we decided on the particular foci for the project.

Chapter 1 presents a conceptual framework for software architecture. One of

the problems the field of software architecture faces is the lack of a widely

accepted terminology or even a set of concepts. In this chapter we present the

major concepts and define supporting terminology that allows us to discuss the

problems and solutions in a uniform way. Chapters 2 through 4 are the "technology"

chapters, each dealing with one major aspect of software architecture for product

families: architecture description, architecture assessment, and architecture

recovery.

Then follow three "experience" chapters. Chapter 5 presents the experience

of Philips in applying software architecture in consumer electronics. Chapter

6 presents several experiments carried out at Nokia to deal with the documentation

and assessment of software architecture. Chapter 7 describes ABB's experience

in developing a software architecture for a family of train control systems,

starting with three existing systems. The experience chapters describe the case

studies in detail. Each chapter describes the state of the art at the start

of the project in the particular area, the problems we observed and tried to

address in that area, and some of the ARES results.

Software architecture, product lines, and product families are all active areas

of research and the subject of intense interest in industry. There are already

several good books available that present different views of software architecture

both for practitioners and researchers. Some present specific methodologies,

some present research approaches, some present practical experiences. Our book

may best be characterized as describing the application of research results

to practice. Its aim is to show the reader how current research results may

be applied and how to overcome the inevitable shortcomings of research results

in practice.

For example, Chapter 2 introduces the concepts and approaches in software architecture

description and concentrates mostly on the language Darwin, which was invented

at Imperial College, one of the academic partners in the project. Chapter 5

describes how Darwin was applied at Philips and why the engineers at Philips

had to modify Darwin to use it in practice. Indeed, they ended up developing

their own tool, Koala, borrowing many of the concepts of Darwin but not the

language itself. Chapter 7 describes what happened when ABB tried to use Darwin

in architecture recovery. It worked for some things but not for others. ABB

also had to do its own customization. We expect these kinds of results to be

of interest to people concerned with software architecture both in academia

and in industry.

Chapter 8 concludes the book by providing a high-level summary of the results

and an outlook for future developments in the area of software architecture.

It also discusses the critical issue of technology transfer in such a rapidly

evolving field.

This is not the definitive work on software architecture families. No such

book exists and will not exist for several years to come. But we need different

views of the problem until eventually there will be enough understanding to

have a textbook. This book is a modest step in that direction.

How to Read This Book

The project ARES started in December 1995 and was completed in February 1999.

During this time, many people from all the partners worked on the project--some

for a limited period of time and others during the whole period. The focus of

the project was to produce results that could be exploited immediately by the

partners.

For example, we at the Technical University of Vienna started a software architecture

course relying heavily on the case studies from the ARES project. At Philips,

engineers developed new tools for documenting software architectures and automatically

generating code for module interconnection. At Nokia, engineers developed Web-based

tools for organizing the documentation of complex systems. At ABB, the results

of some of the ARES work drove the design of a new family architecture for train

control systems. At Imperial College, the feedback from engineers in the three

companies led to improvements in the Darwin tool set. At the Polytechnic University

of Madrid, the researchers developed techniques for architecture assessment

and response-time analysis that were used by the different industrial partners.

Although such results of the ARES project were useful and beneficial to the

partners, the goal of the project was much larger. As a research project, we

wanted to communicate our results to the larger research and industrial community.

This we did through many publications in conferences and journals. Toward the

end of the project we asked ourselves if there was anything else left to say

that our publications did not say. The answer was that indeed much was left

unsaid. The publications for the most part presented technological solutions

to particular problems encountered at the time of publication. What was missing

was any kind of integration--a larger conclusion, a bigger picture based on

more than three years of experience. We decided that a book with the focus on

the larger picture was the answer.

Rather than concentrating on point solutions to specific technical problems,

the book would give a perspective of a three-year experience. Each chapter tries

to look back three years and move forward to share a three-year perspective

with the reader. This was the best way we could imagine to communicate what

we learned in the project. This kind of presentation in each chapter gives the

reader the opportunity to see the whole picture: our assumptions, our starting

point, and where we ended up. As a reader, you can judge how our experiences

may or may not apply in your context.

The project investigated different aspects of software architecture. In Chapter

1, "ARES Conceptual Framework for Software Architecture," Alexander Ran tries

to abstract and summarize from these different aspects the project's collective

understanding of an architecture-oriented approach to software engineering.

In some ways, this chapter is the main result of the ARES project to be communicated

to the community. Experienced software engineers and architects may read this

chapter immediately and identify with many points it makes. Less experienced

engineers probably will find this chapter unconvincing or hard to read initially.

They will be better off reading the chapter quickly at the beginning and then

returning to read it more carefully after they have read the rest of the book.

The rest of the book contains three "technology" chapters and three "experience"

chapters. The technology chapters (2 through 4) abstract the technological aspects

of our experience in a particular area. For example, Chapter 4 ("Software Architecture

Recovery") tries to organize the processes that we used in applying architecture

recovery to the ABB case study. It is not a research presentation as much as

an attempt to document the approaches that worked in the case study. But rather

than presenting the details of the case study, it presents methodological approaches

that may be useful in other case studies of interest to the reader. Thus, in

reading one of the experience chapters (5 through 7), you can form your own

conclusions about the experiment and the experience. A technology chapter presents

our conclusions about the applicability of technology to real-world situations.

The technology and experience chapters may be read in any order if the reader

prefers to jump to a favorite subject.

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Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0201699672
• ISBN 13: 9780201699678
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288