Maintaining architectural conformance through the mapping of architectural decisions to implementation practices and patterns

架构决策表达了塑造软件架构并对软件质量有很大影响的规则和操作。常见的架构决策包括应用架构样式、设计模式和架构策略等设计解决方案，以及选择适当的技术。虽然现有技术能够快速构建软件系统，但开发人员仍然需要了解所选的设计解决方案，并能够使用所选的技术正确地实现它们。 事实上，尽管现有的方法在管理和记录体系结构决策方面取得了进展，但我们仍然缺乏有效的支持，以在系统的开发和发展过程中强制执行体系结构风格、策略和模式。此外，最近的经验研究表明，开发人员并不总是理解他们的更改对体系结构的影响。这在一定程度上是因为开发人员不知道采用了什么样式、策略和设计模式。即使他们知道，他们也可能不知道如何使用所选技术实现这些设计解决方案；即，现有技术以不同方式实现相同的设计解决方案，并且他们有自己的设计实践和模式。 因此，建议的研究计划的目标是研究常见的现有技术，以找出它们如何支持设计解决方案(即体系结构样式、策略和设计模式)；并使用这些知识来开发技术和工具，以加强这些解决方案的约束和防止体系结构的侵蚀。为此，我们建议首先构建一个知识库，其中包含常见样式、策略和模式固有的约束和交互协议的显式表示；以及这些样式、策略和模式的技术特定实现的显式表示，包括如何映射约束和交互。其次，我们建议利用模型驱动的技术来构建适当的方法和工具，这些方法和工具使用知识库将约束和交互转换为特定项目的上下文，并实施这些约束。 该研究项目的结果将有助于更好地理解和支持设计解决方案，包括体系结构风格、设计模式和体系结构策略，并在软件开发和演化过程中实施这些解决方案。通过支持开发人员了解设计解决方案及其使用通用现有技术的适当实现，我们有助于提高软件系统的质量、提高生产率并降低维护成本。

Architectural decisions express rules and actions that shape software architecture and have a large impact on software quality. Common architectural decisions include applying design solutions such as architectural styles, design patterns and architectural tactics, and choosing appropriate technologies. While existing technologies enable to rapidly build software systems, developers still need to understand the selected design solutions and be able to correctly implement them using the chosen technologies. In fact, despite the progress made by existing approaches in managing and documenting architectural decisions, we still lack effective support for enforcing architectural styles, tactics and patterns during development and evolution of the system. Also, recent empirical studies revealed that developers do not always understand the impact of their changes on architecture. This is partly due to the fact that developers do not know what styles, tactics, and design patterns were adopted. Even if they knew, they may not know how to implement these design solutions using the chosen technology; i.e., existing technologies implement differently the same design solutions and they have their own design practices and patterns. Therefore, the goal of the proposed research program is to study common existing technologies to figure out how they support design solutions (i.e., architectural styles, tactics and design patterns); and use this knowledge to develop techniques and tools that enforce these solutions’ constraints and prevent architectural erosion. To do so, we propose to first build a knowledge base that contains explicit representations of the constraints and interaction protocols inherent to common styles, tactics and patterns; and explicit representations of technology-specific implementations of these styles, tactics and patterns including how constraints and interactions are mapped. Second we propose to leverage model-driven techniques to build appropriate approaches and tools that use the knowledge base to translate constraints and interactions into the context of specific projects, and enforce these constraints. The results of this research program will contribute to a better understanding and support of design solutions including architectural styles, design patterns and architectural tactics, and enforcing these solutions during software development and evolution. By supporting developers in understanding design solutions and their appropriate implementations using common existing technologies, we contribute to enhancing the quality of software systems, increasing productivity and reducing maintenance costs.