Software architecture design by stepwise model transformations: A comparative case study

Abstract

Software architecture design is a critical task as lots of requirements can be taken into account on which many decisions can be made. The maintenance and evolution of resulting models often become tricky, even impracticable when their rationale is lost. In a previous work, we introduced a set of languages used in a transformation-centric design method meant to tackle this scattering of requirements and to facilitate further model evolutions. But, we did not provided a formal validation of our proposal yet. The present work depicts a comparative case study we conducted on a group of students. The participants were asked to develop an online book store in two phases, the second one simulating an evolution of the system. We evaluated the functional completeness of the created software as well as the traceability of design decisions and rationale. The participants were also asked to criticize the design method and language they used in a textual report and through a questionnaire. Even if the size of the case study is rather limited, it clearly highlighs the advantages of our approach regarding, among others, its expressiveness and decisions traceability.