EVOLVING THE ARCHITECTURE OF A SOFTWARE APPLICATION

• US 20090300579A1
• Filed: 06/03/2008
• Published: 12/03/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/03/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Dutta, Suhail, Trowbridge, David N.
• Granted Patent: US 8,397,210 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/105
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/10 Requirements analysis; Specification techniques

Abstract

The logical architecture of an existing or target application or software system is modeled in the form of one or more architecture diagrams. The existing and target diagrams may be compared. A diagram may be modified by associating physical artifacts from an architecture discovery system or by selecting artifacts identified via a query statement. Rules are associated with the diagrams and validation performed based on the rules and the physical artifacts associated with the diagrams. A report may be produced facilitating further modifications to evolve the architecture represented by the diagrams to the target architecture.

Claims

1. A system for evolving the architecture of a software application comprising:

a diagram designer, the diagram designer receiving user input and architecture information from an architecture discovery system, the diagram designer generating from the user input and the information from the architecture discovery system, an architecture diagram wherein at least one physical artifact is linked directly to a model element of the architecture diagram or wherein the at least one physical artifact is linked indirectly to the model element of the architecture diagram by linking a logical model to the model element, wherein the at least one physical artifact is linked to the model linked to the model element, the architecture diagram modeling an existing architecture or modeling an architecture evolving towards a target architecture or modeling the target architecture;

a validator that applies at least one user-specified rule for the model element of the modified architecture diagram and determines whether the at least one physical artifact linked directly or indirectly to the model element conforms to the at least one user-specified rule, the validator generating a report of constraint violations.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein modifications are made to the architecture diagram or to the model elements or to the physical artifacts based on the report of constraint violations using the diagram designer.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein physical artifacts are directly linked to the model element of the architecture diagram by a user gesture performed on physical artifacts identified in the architecture information provided by the architecture discovery system and selected by the user gesture operation or wherein physical artifacts identified by a query statement are directly linked to the model element of the architecture diagram.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein physical artifacts are indirectly linked to the model element of the architecture diagram by linking a model exposed by the architecture discovery system to the model element of the architecture diagram.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the architecture diagram is created by deriving architecture information from an actual existing codebase comprising physical artifacts or model elements or models.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein modifications are made to the architecture diagram based on the constraint violations to evolve an existing architecture to a target architecture.

7. A method of evolving an existing software architecture to a target software architecture comprising:

creating a first architecture diagram modeling a user perception of an existing logical architecture;

programmatically creating a second architecture diagram modeling an actual existing logical architecture based on information from an architecture discovery system that infers a logical architecture from an existing codebase;

modifying the first architecture diagram or the second software architecture diagram to create a modified architecture diagram evolving towards modeling a target architecture by associating rules and constraints to model elements of the modified architecture diagram;

generating a report of constraint violations based on applying the rules and constraints associated with the model elements of the modified architecture diagram to the physical artifacts linked to the model elements of the modified architecture diagram;

iteratively modifying the modified architecture based on the report of constraint violations and iteratively generating the report to evolve an architecture modeled by the modified architecture report to the target architecture.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

generating the report of constraint violations by user-specified rules to model elements of the modified architecture diagram, the report of constraint violations comprising a list of discrepancies between a target architecture and an actual architecture.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein physical artifacts are directly associated with model elements of the first architecture diagram, the second architecture diagram or the modified architecture diagram by selecting physical artifacts exposed by the architecture discovery system, wherein the selecting is performed by user gesture operations, or wherein physical artifacts are directly associated with the model elements by identifying physical artifacts by a query statement and associating the identified physical artifacts with the model elements.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein physical artifacts are indirectly associated with model elements of the first architecture diagram, the second architecture diagram or the modified architecture diagram by selecting a model, wherein physical artifacts are linked to the model and linking the selected model to the model elements.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein generating the report of constraint violations is performed automatically by scheduling the report to run automatically whenever a build is done, whenever code is checked into a source code control system or whenever an architecture diagram is modified in a diagram designer tool.

12. A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions which when executed cause a computing environment to:

generate a first architecture diagram using a diagram designer, the first architecture diagram modeling a perception of an existing codebase based on user input;

generate a second architecture diagram using the diagram designer, the second diagram modeling an actual existing codebase based on information available from an architecture discovery system provided to the diagram designer;

modifying the first architecture diagram or the second architecture diagram to create a modified architecture diagram to model a target software architecture;

associating selected physical artifacts with a model element of the modified architecture diagram;

associating rules and constraints with the model element of the modified architecture diagram; and

generating a report of constraint violations by applying the rules and constraints associated with the model element to the physical artifacts associated with the model element and listing discrepancies between the rules and constraints and the physical artifacts.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

associate physical artifacts with the modified architecture diagram by selecting a physical artifact or a model associated with a physical artifact or a model element associated with a physical artifact by a user gesture operation.

14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

associate physical artifacts with the modified architecture diagram by selecting physical artifacts, models or model elements that satisfy a query statement.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

apply user-specified rules associated with model elements of the modified architecture diagram to the physical artifacts associated with the model elements of the modified architecture diagram.

16. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

generate a report of discrepancies between the user-specified rules and the software architecture modeled by the modified architecture diagram.

17. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

guide development of the target software architecture by automatically generating the report of discrepancies between the user-specified rules and the architecture modeled by the modified architecture diagram whenever a build is done.

18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

guide development of the target software architecture by automatically generating the report of discrepancies between the user-specified rules and the architecture modeled by the modified architecture diagram whenever code is checked into a source code control system.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

guide development of the target software architecture by automatically generating the report of discrepancies between the user-specified rules and the architecture modeled by the modified architecture diagram whenever an architecture diagram is modified in the layer designer.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

illustrate dependencies between model elements, wherein a model element is one of a layer, a component.