Dependency profiles for software architecture evaluations

In this paper we introduce the concept of a “dependency profile”, a system level metric aimed at quantifying the level of encapsulation and independence within a system. We verify that these profiles are suitable to be used in an evaluation context by inspecting the dependency profiles for a repository of almost 100 systems. Furthermore we outline the steps we are taking to validate the usefulness and applicability of the proposed profiles.

I Introduction

Software architecture is loosely defined as the organizational structure of a software system including components, connections, constraints, and rationale [7]. Since the architecture of a software system greatly influences all of a system's quality attributes [4], it is important to regularly evaluate the actual, as-implemented, software architecture of a system.