Many software development projects start with an existing code base that has to be tightly integrated into a new system. In order to make a robust system that will achieve the desired business goals, developers must be able to understand the architecture of the old code base and its rationale. This thesis presents a lightweight approach for the recovery of software architecture. The main goal of the approach is to provide an efficient way for architecture recovery that works on small to mid-sized software systems, and gives a useful starting point on large ones. The emphasis of the process is on the use of well established development techniques and tools, in order to minimize adoption costs and maximize the return on investment.

An object-oriented software system is composed of a collection of communicating objects that co-operate with one another to achieve some desired goals. The object is the basic unit of abstraction in an OO program; objects may model real-world entities or internal abstractions of the system. Similar objects forms classes, which encapsulate the data and operations performed on the data. Therefore, extracting, analyzing, and modelling classes/objects and their relationships is of key importance in understanding and maintaining object-oriented software systems. However, when dealing with large and complex object-oriented systems, maintainers can easily be overwhelmed by the vast number of classes/objects and the high degree of interdependencies among them. In this thesis, we propose a new model, which we call the Hybrid Model, to represent object-oriented systems at a coarse-grained level of abstraction. To promote the comprehensibility of objects as independent units, we group the complete static description of software objects into aggregate components. Each aggregate component logically represents a set of objects, and the components interact with one other through explicitly defined ports. We present and discuss several applications of the Hybrid Model in reverse engineering and software evolution. The Hybrid Model can be used to support a divide-and-conquer comprehension strategy for program comprehension. At a low level of abstraction, maintainers can focus on one aggregate-component at a time, while at a higher level, each aggregate component can be understood as a whole and be mapped to coarse-grained design abstractions, such as subsystems. Based on the new model, we further propose a set of dependency analysis methods. The analysis results reveal the external properties of aggregate components, and lead to better understand the nature of their interdependencies. In addition, we apply the new model in software evolution analysis. We identify a collection of change patterns in terms of changes in aggregate components and their interrelationships. These patterns help to interpret how an evolving system changes at the architectural level, and provides valuable information to understand why the system is designed as the way it is.

Software has been studied at a variety of granularities. Code, classes, groups of classes, programs and finally large scale applications have been examined in detail. What lies beyond is the study of software collections that group together many individual applications. Collecting software and distributing it via a central repository has been popular for a while in the open source world, and only recently caught on commercially with Apple’s Mac app store and Microsoft’s Windows store. In many of these software collections, there is normally a complex process that must be followed in order to fully integrate new applications into the system. Moreover, in the case of open source software collections, applications frequently rely on each other for functionality and their interactions can be complex. We know that there are thousands of applications in these software collections that people depend on worldwide, but research in this area has been limited compared to other areas and granularities of software. In this thesis, we explore the evolution and architecture of a large open source software collections by using Debian as a case study. Debian is a software collection based off the Linux kernel with a large number of packages spread over multiple hardware platforms. Each package provides a particular service or application and is actively maintained by one or more developers. This thesis investigates how these packages evolve through time and their interactions with one another. The first half of the thesis describes the life cycle of a package from inception to end by carrying out a longitudinal study using the Ultimate Debian Database (UDD). The birth of packages is examined to see how Debian is growing. Conversely, package death is also analyzed to determine the lifespan of these packages. Moreover, four different package attributes are examined. They are package age, package bugs, package maintainers and package popularity. These four attributes combine to give us the overall biography of Debian packages. Debian’s architecture is explored in the second part of the thesis, where we analyze how packages interact with each other by examining the package dependencies in detail. The dependencies within Debian are extensive, which makes for an interesting architecture, but they are complex to analyze. This thesis provides a close look at the layered pattern. This pattern categorizes each package into one of five layers based on how they are used. These layers may also be visualized to give a concise view of how an application is structured. Using these views, we define five architectural subpatterns and anti-subpatterns which can aid developers in creating and maintaining packages.

Electronic medical records, in addition contributing to a hospital¡¦s overall electronic development and moving towards a paperless environment, also allow hospitals to share electronic medical information. To solve the problem of different medical information systems that hamper information sharing, the Executive Yuan Heath Department Commission has requested the assistance of the Taiwan Association for Medical Information to establish a standard Electronic Medical Record Template, in hopes that there is a national unified Electronic Medical Record Template that also uses the international medical information standard, so that all hospital¡¦s information is accessible, allowing for easy sharing of electronic medical records. The administration department also supports in recommending and creating related steps of incentive, to encourage professional electronic medical record researchers making up a standard internet medical information exchange mechanism, with a goal of achieving national medical information exchange. Though the Executive Yuan Heath Department Commission had a nice scheme, but the standard Electronic Medical Record Template established by Taiwan Association for Medical Information is nothing more than a Form Structure Diagram what is far from the software architecture discipline. This research aims to re-define the electronic medical record system, adopting a software architecture modeling approach. Through Structure Element Diagram, Structure Element Service Diagram, Structure Behavior Coalescence Diagram, and Sequence Diagram as four gold rules, we are able to build up any electronic medical record system architecture. Besides providing medical information personnel a more definite electronic medical record system, this research aids hospitals quickly attain an effective electronic medical record system.

Steel structure enterprises, belonging to domestic-oriented industry, are capital intensive and skill intensive as well. The ability of huge fund deployment and excellent project management is the key for such kind of enterprises to survive in the competitive environment due to the low entry barrier and little profit margin. The cost of the material accounts for the most, usually the greatest proportion of the total contract, in an entire steel structure project. Therefore, the profit in general depends heavily on the quality of material management. In this thesis, we propose Architecture Oriented Steel Structure Material Scheduling Model (AOSSMSM), to capture the current material inventory, reduce the remaining stock, improve the circulation and substitutability, and increase the profit. AOSSMSM constructs system architecture which includes enterprise architecture and software architecture, therefore highlights material¡¦s service and interaction among culture value chain in enterprise and integrates with information application system. By duplication and expansion characteristics of system architecture, AOSSMSM can be replicated effortlessly by other steel structure companies, or bridged to other models to create a new operational formation.

With introduction of information technology, the role of human resources management has transformed from traditional administrative affairs to strategic partners. Each enterprise, whether small or large, can not be divorced from the management of human resources. Finding proper talents; retaining and training employees for enterprises to maintain a strong vitality; providing effective supports to human resources etc. are important issues that human resources management currently needs to face. An ideal human resources management system must not only meet the needs of enterprises, but also be adaptable to the environment¡¦s change. Today, most human resources management systems on the market are in the form of packages and process-oriented; therefore, they have difficulties to cope with the frequently changed environment. As the saying goes, "Know both your opponent and yourself ever victorious", architecture-oriented construction of a system becomes the beacon to many enterprises so that they have a better grasp of the effective integration of resources, in order to create the maximum corporate value. Architecture-oriented human resource management model, abbreviated as AOHRMM, includes enterprise architecture and software architecture, which not only describes enterprise behaviors in terms of interactions among enterprise structures, but also fully applies information technology and system integration. From analysis to design, through macro to micro of architecture-oriented characteristics, AOHRMM is able to complete the construction of enterprise systems with consistency and standardization. Also with communication capabilities of architecture framework, AOHRMM makes all processes transparent, so that enterprise strategies, personnel, and any system all have a consistent direction and goal. In addition to combining resources to achieve the mission, AOHRMM is vigorous with rapid response and flexibility to adjust in consistently changing environment.

On a market of free competition, when consumers select their telecommunication service provider, they will not only consider basic elements such as the installation fee, call rate, and telecommunication reliability but also whether the provider can furnish the desired customer service, which is especially important. For most consumers, an essential part of customer service is the payment service. Due to the fact that there is not much difference in the technology, communication facilities and the type of business provided by different companies in the telecommunication industry, billing system and related customer services accordingly become the key differential factor and play a indispensable role in the decision-making process of customers. Moreover, as far as the operation, management, and strategy are concerned, billing system is the key backup for telecommunication enterprises. Establishing a billing system meeting the requirement of an enterprise that can provide the desired customer services hence becomes a priority for large telecommunication companies wishing to gain the upper hand in competition. This research uses the software architecture concept to develop a set of description language for the WiMAX billing management system based on which the architecture-oriented WiMAX billing management system model, abbreviated as AOWBMSM, is formulated. AOWBMSM is an integral model of the WiMAX billing management system framework which adopts the structure behavior coalescence, abbreviated as SBC, approach. It can clearly and completely describe the WiMAX billing management system and hopefully can serve as a model with more reference value when enterprises are planning, analyzing, and designing their payment system.

As the size and complexity of a software system increases, the design problem goes beyond the algorithms and data structures of the computation. Designing and specifying the overall system structure -- or software architecture -- becomes the central problem. A system's architecture provides a model of the system that hides implementation detail, allowing the architect to concentrate on the analyses and decisions that are most crucial to structuring the system to satisfy its requirements. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, current exploitation of software architecture and architectural style is informal and ad hoc. The lack of an explicit, independent characterization of architecture and architectural style significantly limits the extent to which software architecture can be exploited using current practices. Architecture Description Languages(ADL) result from a linguistic approach to the formal description of software architectures. ADLs should facilitate building of architectures, not just specification. Further, they should also address the compositionality, substitutability, and reusability issues, which are the key to successful large-scale software development. A software architecture description language with a well defined type system can facilitate compositionality, substitutability, and usability, the three keys to successful large-scale software development. Our contribution is a new software architecture description language, TriSL, which supports these features. In this talk we describe the design and implementation of TriSL and its type system. We demonstrate the power of our language and its expressiveness through case studies of real world applications.

<p>In this modern world, healthcare has becoming a popular word in human life. People pay their attention on their health protection and treatment, but at the same time, they need to bear the high expenditure for their healthcare processing.</p><p>It is a serious problem that the government income can not afford the large expense in healthcare industry. Especially in some developing countries, healthcare problem has become the problem for the nation development.</p><p>We would like to choose this basic way to solve this problem directly, to provide the channel to improve the efficiency of healthcare system, Cambio COSMIC.</p><p>The aim to analysis COSMIC for my case study is to find out the conclusion that how does the architect design the system from the stakeholders requirement to achieve the success of improving the efficiency of healthcare system. And how to measure the success for the system achieving to improve the efficiency of healthcare system is still required to indicate.</p>

Thesis (M.Sc.)--York University, 2007. Graduate Programme in Software Engineering. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-155). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR38796