Rule Type Based Reasoning on Architecture Violations: A Case Study

Abstract

Software architecture compliance checking (SACC) is an approach to monitor the consistency between the intended and the implemented architecture. In case of static SACC, the focus is mainly on the detection of dependencies that violate architectural relation rules. Interpretation of reported violations may be cumbersome, since the violations need to be connected to architectural resolutions and targeted qualities such as maintainability and portability. This paper describes an SACC case study which shows that inclusion of different types of rules in the SACC process enhances reasoning on architecture violations, especially if a rule type is related to specific architectural pattern. The SACC is performed with HUSACCT, an SACC-tool that provides rich sets of module and rule types in support of patterns such as layers, facade, and gateway. The case system is a governmental system developed in C#, which follows the .NET common application architecture. Even though the system appeared to be well-structured, the SACC revealed that 10 of the 17 architectural rules were violated.