An introduction to evolution of large systems based on Software Architectures

摘要

Market forces and current engineering practices in the field of software-intensive systems make the development and evolution of large systems difficult, resulting in high maintenance costs. A novel approach emphasizing the architectural design phase of development can imporve the situation. It is called "Software Architecture"; it allows us to manage the development process including evolution activities in controlled way, by means of several views of the system. This article reviews the current state of the art in this area, and proposes a process for adoption and usage of software architectures in the development and evolution of large software systems.