A Case Study of Measuring Degeneration of Software Architectures from a Defect Perspective

Li, Zude; Long, Jun

doi:10.1109/apsec.2011.51

Cited by 11 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Izurieta and Bieman 16 used "design decay" to express the deterioration of internal structure of system design, while they focused more on the decay of design patterns. Besides, some other terms are also used to describe the same phenomenon, such as design erosion, 17 architecture degeneration, 8 and code decay. 18 In this SMS, we proposed and refined the definition of architecture erosion: architecture erosion happens when the implemented architecture violates the intended architecture with flawed internal structure or when architecture becomes resistant to change.…”

Section: Terms Of Architecture Erosionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 Due to the severe consequences of AEr, it has been the subject in architecture research since the architecture concept was coined, and the first definition of the concept of AEr was given by Perry and Wolf 1 almost 30 years ago. However, the phenomenon of AEr has been described using various terms and definitions in the literature, including software erosion, 3,5 design erosion, 6 design decay, 7 architecture degeneration, 8 architectural decay, 9 code decay, 10 and modular deterioration. 11 Some of these terms focus on erosion at different levels of abstraction; for example, code decay 10 highlights more code anomalies (i.e., at the code level), whereas modular deterioration 11 concentrates on the modularity of systems (i.e., at the architecture level).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Understanding software architecture erosion: A systematic mapping study

Liang

Soliman

et al. 2022

J Software Evolu Process

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Architecture erosion (AEr) can adversely affect software development and has received significant attention in the last decade. However, there is an absence of a comprehensive understanding of the state of research about the reasons and consequences of AEr, and the countermeasures to address AEr. This work aims at systematically investigating, identifying, and analyzing the reasons, consequences, and ways of detecting and handling AEr. With 73 studies included, the main results are as follows: (1) AEr manifests not only through architectural violations and structural issues but also causing problems in software quality and during software evolution; (2) non-technical reasons that cause AEr should receive the same attention as technical reasons, and practitioners should raise awareness of the grave consequences of AEr, thereby taking actions to tackle AEr-related issues; (3) a spectrum of approaches, tools, and measures has been proposed and employed to detect and tackle AEr; and (4) three categories of difficulties and five categories of lessons learned on tackling AEr were identified. The results can provide researchers a comprehensive understanding of AEr and help practitioners handle AEr and improve the sustainability of their architecture. More empirical studies are required to investigate the practices of detecting and addressing AEr in industrial settings.

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Section: Terms Of Architecture Erosionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding software architecture erosion: A systematic mapping study

Liang

Soliman

et al. 2022

J Software Evolu Process

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“…Several factors may contribute to architectural erosion, such as the architectural change of a system over time [24], developer mistakes, bad practices [27], disregard of fundamental architectural rules of a system due to the modification. Consequently, continuing architectural erosion could shorten the system lifetime or re-engineering from scratch [27,28].…”

Section: B Architectural Erosionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing the Architectural Erosion Metrics: A Systematic Mapping Study

et al. 2022

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Software architecture is crucial in determining success or failure in a variety of software development and design fields. Typically, as a system evolves, software architecture deteriorates. This phenomenon is known as architectural erosion. Several studies have addressed architectural erosion based on different solutions. As a result, the metrics technique is the most prevalent solution for architectural erosion. Nevertheless, a comprehensive description of architectural erosion metrics remains unorganized and scattered. This work aims to conduct a systematic mapping to describe and analyze the architectural erosion metrics to provide an overview of erosion metrics and their current trends. Furthermore, no systematic attempts have been made on architectural erosion metrics. The final samples of this study were specified as a total of 43 included papers. Nearly 100 architectural erosion metrics were found. We proposed nine classifications to address architectural erosion challenges, based on adopted approaches in primary studies. The metrics of architectural erosion provide strong evidence for identifying decay and a rapid enabler factor for the adoption of numerous metrics mechanisms to address architectural erosion. The classification of metrics, which is the first of its kind, benefits researchers and practitioners. However, it can be concluded that various aspects are still ambiguous and require further research on architectural erosion measures.

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“…Interestingly, the eroded architecture impulses the system to complexity, difficulty, and frequent changes than before [27]. The repeated architectural decay leads to a shortening lifetime of the system or rather affects the architecture entirely, resulting in redesigning the architecture of the system from scratch [28]. As a consequence, the SA of system erode over time.…”

Section: B Software Architecture Degradationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Software Architecture Degradation in Open Source Software: A Systematic Literature Review

et al. 2020

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Software architecture (SA) has a prominent role in all stages of system development. Given the persistent evolution of software systems over time, SA tends to be eroded or degraded. Such phenomenon is called architectural degradation. In light of this phenomenon, the current study focuses on problems of architectural erosion in the open-source software (OSS). There has been a significant research activity on the OSS over the last decade. Nonetheless, the architectural degradation problems in the OSS are still scattered and disorganized. In addition, there has been no systematic attempt made on existing studies to provide evidence, insight and better understanding for researchers and practitioners. The main objective of the present study is to provide a profound understanding and to review the existing studies on the architectural erosion of the OSS. In this study, we conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) to gather, organize, classify, and analyze the architectural degradation of previous papers published until the year 2020. The data for this study were collected from eight major online databases (ACM, Springer, ScienceDirect, Taylor, IEEE Explorer, Scopus, Web of Science, and Wiley). A total of 74 primary studies were identified as the final samples of this research. The results indicated that rapid software evolution, frequent changes, and the lack of developers' awareness are the most common causes occurred in architecture degradation. Meanwhile, the prominent key indicators of architectural erosion symptoms are code smells and architectural smells. Additionally, the results indicated the most commonly used of the proposed solution for addressing architectural erosion is the metrics-based strategy. Acknowledging the limitations of the current study, more studies are needed that focus on determining other causes that are still ambiguous and improving the other solutions to provide better results in the precision and effectiveness of addressing architectural erosion.

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A Case Study of Measuring Degeneration of Software Architectures from a Defect Perspective

Cited by 11 publications

References 26 publications

Understanding software architecture erosion: A systematic mapping study

Understanding software architecture erosion: A systematic mapping study

Characterizing the Architectural Erosion Metrics: A Systematic Mapping Study

Software Architecture Degradation in Open Source Software: A Systematic Literature Review

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