SAPlugin: Management and Extraction of Software Architecture Descriptions in Visual Paradigm
The design and documentation of software architectures involves substantial and non-trivial modeling effort, especially when relying on multiple complementary views that have to accurately and consistently depict complementary architectural concerns. This problem is exacerbated for novices that are getting acquainted with the distinction between models and views and lack tool support to enforce correspondences between complementary views. To address this need, we developed a Visual Paradigm plugin, called SAPlugin, that uses the API of this modeling tool to analyze the architecture and provide feedback.
The SAPlugin provides support to (1) analyze the architecture for problems in modeling conventions and consistency, and diagram consistencies, (2) warn for missing documentation, (3) restructure the project and its model according a set of conventions, and (4) generate architectural documentation in PDF. Having adopted the SAPlugin in a Software Architecture master’s course over eight subsequent years, we reflect on and evaluate its effects and merits.
We specifically observe that the use of the SAPlugin has greatly reduced the effort for architectural documentation creation and substantially reduced the issues of inconsistency and architectural correspondence. Finally, we highlight the potential of leveraging the created technology as an enabler for more extensive empirical studies on the architecture decision-making process.
Fri 4 AprDisplayed time zone: Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris change
10:30 - 11:30 | Software Patterns and Architectural Design Principles ISoftware Architecture in Practice / Journal First / Research Papers at Main Hall (O100) Chair(s): Valentina Lenarduzzi University of Oulu | ||
10:30 15mJournal Early-Feedback | Agent design pattern catalogue: A collection of architectural patterns for foundation model based agents Journal First Yue Liu Data61, CSIRO, Sin Kit Lo CSIRO Data61, Qinghua Lu Data61, CSIRO, Liming Zhu CSIRO’s Data61, Dehai Zhao CSIRO's Data61, Xiwei (Sherry) Xu Data61, CSIRO, Stefan Harrer CSIRO's Data61, Jon Whittle CSIRO's Data61 and Monash University | ||
10:45 15mPaper | Recovering Gropius Models with the Cluster Architecture Recovery Assistant Software Architecture in Practice Sandro Speth Institute of Software Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Elias Müller Institute of Software Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Philipp Recke , Niklas Krieger , Steffen Becker University of Stuttgart, Alexander Poth Volkswagen AG, Olsi Rrjolli Volkswagen AG File Attached | ||
11:00 15mPaper | SAPlugin: Management and Extraction of Software Architecture Descriptions in Visual Paradigm Software Architecture in Practice Laurens Sion DistriNet, KU Leuven, Dimitri Van Landuyt KU Leuven, Belgium, Koen Yskout imec - DistriNet, KU Leuven, Wouter Joosen Katholieke Universiteit Leuven | ||
11:15 15mResearch paper | Deicide: Decomposing Complex Classes Into Responsibility Modules Research Papers Jason Lefever Drexel University, Yuanfang Cai Drexel University, Rick Kazman University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Ernst Pisch Drexel University |