The Impact of Software-Architecture Compliance on System Evolution

This chapter discusses how the evolution of a software system is heavily influenced by its underlying system architecture. When the architecture is flexible, and can change dynamically, evolution may be accommodated. Compliant architectures, which are those that may be tailored to fit the needs of particular applications, fit this description. The degree of compliance can be measured by the goodness of fit of the application to the architecture. This degree of compliance can be used to monitor and drive the evolutionary development of the system. In this chapter the scheduling policy of ProcessWeb, a multi-user process support system, is used as an example. The "goodness of fit" of the scheduling policy, and its impact on the evolution of the system, are discussed. Finally, the monitoring of a system's degree of compliance is discussed in order to better understand its evolution.