10.8 For Further Reading

There are several reconstruction workbenches in existence. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has developed Dali [Kazman 99a]. Other examples include Sneed's reengineering workbench [Sneed 98], the software renovation factories of Verhoef and associates [Brand 97], and the rearchitecting tool suite by Philips Research [Krikhaar 99].

The Rigi Standard Form is discussed in [Müller 93]. The Rigi tool is described in [Wong 94].

[Bowman 99] outlines a method similar to Dali for extracting architectural documentation from the code of an implemented system. In one example, they reconstructed the architecture of the Linux system, analyzing source code using a cfx program (c-code fact extractor) to obtain symbol information from the code and generating a set of relations between the symbols. Then they manually created a tree-structured decomposition of the Linux system into subsystems and assigned the source files to them. Next, they used the grok fact manipulator tool to determine relations between the identified subsystems, and the lsedit visualization tool to visualize the extracted system structure. Refinement of the resultant structure was carried out by moving source files between subsystems.

Harris and associates outline a framework for architecture reconstruction using a combined bottom-up and top-down approach [Harris 95]. The framework consists of three parts: the architecture representation, the source code recognition engine and supporting library of recognition queries, and a "bird's-eye" program overview capability. The bottom-up analysis uses the bird's-eye view to display the system's file structure and source elements and to reorganize information into more meaningful clusters. The top-down analysis uses particular architectural patterns to define elements that should be found in the software. Recognition queries are then run to determine if the expected elements exist.

[Guo 99] outlines the semi-automatic architecture recovery method called ARM, for systems that are designed and developed using patterns. It consists of four main steps: (1) develop a concrete pattern recognition plan, (2) extract a source model, (3) detect and evaluate pattern instances, and (4) reconstruct and analyze the architecture. Case studies have been presented showing the use of the ARM method to reconstruct systems and check their conformance against their documented architectures.