Software architecture evaluation

Software architecture evaluation is an important technology used to assure the quality of software products early in the software lifecycle. This paper classifies three types of software architecture evaluation methods: scenario-based, metric and prediction based, and ADL-based. Software architecture evaluation method characteristics (such as method goal, quality attribute, key technique) are then combined with these classifications to produce a comparison framework. This paper utilizes this framework to analyze various existing software architecture evaluation methods and point out problems which need to be resolved. Finally, potential research directions of software architecture evaluation methods are discussed.