Exploring Quality-Aware Architectural Transformations at Run-Time: The ENIA Case

Abstract

Abstract. Adapting software systems at run-time is a key issue, especially when these systems consist of components used as intermediary for human-computer interaction. In this sense, model transformation techniques have a widespread acceptance as a mechanism for adapting and evolving the software architecture of such systems. However, existing model transformations often focus on functional requirements, and quality attributes are only manually considered after the transformations are done. This paper aims to improve the quality of adaptations and evolutions in component-based software systems by taking into account quality attributes within the model transformation process. To this end, we present a quality-aware transformation process using software architecture metrics to select among many alternative model transformations. Such metrics evaluate the quality attributes of an architecture. We validate the presented quality-aware transformation process in ENIA, a geographic information system whose user interfaces are based on coarsegrained components and need to be adapted at run-time.

Quality-aware Architectural Model Transformations in Adaptive Mashups User Interfaces

“…As a result, we decide which is the best transformation based on the considered QAs. This article is an extension of the paper originally published in [4]. The contributions of the present research work can be summarized in the next statements:…”

“…One important difference between our previous work [4] and this paper is the way to conduct the analysis phase of our approach (i.e., step 1).…”

“…Furthermore, some metrics have a generic nature (in this case, generic means applicable to most component-based systems). For example, Table 1 shows a subsets of metrics identified in [4] that are not fixed to a specific domain. Apart from these QA metrics, the mentioned paper also identifies some generic constraints that can be handled in the QA-aware transformation approach.…”