Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Hassan, Yusuf Sharif

Titel

Measuring software architectural stability using retrospective analysis

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2007

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Software architectural stability is concerned with the extent to which an architecture withstands evolutionary changes. An architecture with high stability has a positive impact on the maintenance of software and vice versa. Architectural stability can be viewed from several perspectives and viewpoints. In literature, most of the approaches analyze it from the structural viewpoint based on a host of ambiguous definitions. In this thesis, we disambiguate the definition of stability and adopt the SET definition of architecture. These definitions are used to identify the factors that affect architectural stability. Based on these factors, we present a survey of the existing architectural stability measuring approaches. Also, we use retrospective analysis to develop a new suite of metrics to measure the stability of an architecture from the behavioral viewpoint. A framework was also developed to theoretically validate architectural stability measures. The developed suite of stability measures was validated using this framework.