CS 578
Software Architectures

Spring Semester, 2007
Location: OHE 122
Time: TTh 11:00am - 12:20pm
Class number: 048-30137D and 034-30136D (DEN)

Instructor

Nenad Medvidovic
- Electronic Mail: neno@usc.edu
- Office: SAL 338
- Office Phone: (213) 740-5579
- Office Hours: TTh 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Teaching Assistants

Yuriy Brun
- Electronic Mail: ybrun@usc.edu
- Office: MCB 116
- Office Phone: (213) 740-5564
- Office Hours: M 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Chris Mattmann
- Electronic Mail: mattmann@usc.edu
- Office: SAL 327
- Office Phone: (213) 740-6504
- Office Hours: F 4:00pm-5:00pm
Daniel Popescu
- Electronic Mail: dpopescu@usc.edu
- Office: SAL 327
- Office Phone: (213) 740-6504
- Office Hours: MW 3:00pm - 4:00pm

Overview

Software architecture has become an area of intense research in the software engineering community. A number of architecture modeling notations and support tools, as well as new architectural styles, have emerged. The focus of architecture-based software development is shifted from lines-of-code to coarser-grained building blocks and their overall interconnection structure. Explicit focus on architecture has shown tremendous potential to improve the current state-of-the-art in software development and alleviate many of its problems.

This course will expose you to the concepts, principles, and state-of- the-art methods in software architectures, including domain-specific software architectures (DSSA), architectural styles, architecture description languages (ADL), software connectors, dynamism in architectures, and architecture-based testing and analysis. In the process of studying these concepts, we will make explicit the boundaries of the field and discuss its relationship to other areas of software engineering, specifically requirements, design (including object-oriented design and related notations, such as UML), and implementation. The course will also examine the practical applicability of architecture research, specifically its relationship to the work in software reuse and component interoperability platforms (such as CORBA, Enterprise JavaBeans, COM/DCOM, and .NET). A series of related homework assignments and two exams will be given to assess your understanding of important concepts, methods, languages, and tools.

Academic Integrity

Students must work independently on all individual assignments; collaborating on individual assignments is considered cheating and will be penalized accordingly. All USC students are responsible for reading and following the USC Student Conduct Code, which prohibits plagiarism. Some examples of behavior that is not allowed are: copying all or part of someone else’s work (by hand or by looking at others’ files, either secretly or if shown), and submitting it as your own; giving another student in the class a copy of your assignment solution; consulting with another student during an exam; and copying text from published literature without proper attribution. If you have questions about what is allowed, please discuss it with the instructor.

Students who violate University standards of academic integrity are subject to disciplinary sanctions, including failure in the course and suspension from the University. Since dishonesty in any form harms the individual, other students, and the University, policies on academic integrity have been and will be strictly enforced.

Textbook and Readings

Textbook:

Mary Shaw and David Garlan,
Software Architecture: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline,
Prentice-Hall, 1996.

Supplemental Readings:

Additional papers (see the Schedule). Copies of all the papers will be available for purchase for the on-site students. The off-site students should contact DEN.
To aid your note taking, we will also make the lecture slides available on-line prior to each lecture. You will be able to download them by going to the appropriate Lecture Topic in the Schedule.

Assignments and Examinations

Name	Description	Weight
Examination 1	Assesses your understanding of fundamental software architecture themes and concepts. The focus is on the topics covered in the first half of the course.	20%
Examination 2	Tests your understanding of issues in transferring architectural decisions to designs and implementations. The focus is on the topics covered in the second half of the course.	20%
Homework 1 Academic honesty contract	Establishes your acknowledgment and understanding of the academic conduct guidelines for USC students. NOTE: You cannot pass the course without completing this assignment!	1%
Homework 2 Definitions of basic concepts	Gauges your understanding of the basic software engineering concepts and your perception of several software architecture terms and concepts.	3%
Homework 3 Case study system architecture	Requires you to provide and analyze an architectural breakdown for the system described in the case study discussed in Week 4.	10%
Homework 4 System composition with COTS components	Requires you to analyze a COTS-intensive system architecture for component mismatches.	8%
Homework 5 System composition with COTS connectors	Requires you to analyze a set of widely used COTS connectors for satisfaction of system requirements in high-volume data distribution scenarios.	8%
Homework 6 Architecture-driven system implementation	Requires you to implement and adapt a simple application using an architectural middleware platform.	10%
Homework 7 Architecture-driven dynamic adaptation	Requires you to assess the deployment architecture of a given system for properties of interest, and to change that deployment during the system's runtime.	10%
Homework 8 Architectural recovery	Gives you the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with a suite of architectural recovery techniques and tools, by applying them on an actual software system.	10%

Assignment Submission Guidelines

Please refer to this document for guidelines on submitting your homework assignments.

Schedule (subject to change; check regularly)

Week	Lecture Topic	Readings	Assignments and Exams
1	Course introduction		Homework 1
1	Overview of software engineering principles
2	Origins of Software Architecture	F. P. Brooks, Jr. No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering. IEEE Computer, April 1987. R. N. Taylor, N. Medvidovic, and E. M. Dashofy. The Big Idea. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, to appear.
2	The Context of Software Architecture	R. N. Taylor, N. Medvidovic, and E. M. Dashofy. Architectures in Context: The Reorientation of Software Engineering. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, to appear. D. E. Perry and A. L. Wolf. Foundations for the Study of Software Architectures. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, October 1992.	Homework 1 due January 18, 2007 Homework 2
3	Introduction to Software Architectures	Chapter 1 R. N. Taylor, N. Medvidovic, and E. M. Dashofy. Basic Concepts. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, to appear.
3	Software Connectors	Chapter 7: Section 7.2 R. N. Taylor, N. Medvidovic, and E. M. Dashofy. Connectors. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, to appear.
4	Scope of Software Architectures: Case Studies	Chapter 3 Case Study: Call Center Customer Care (C4) System. R. Kazman. Distributed Flight Simulation: A Challenge for Software Architecture. Technical Report, University of Waterloo.	Homework 2 due January 30, 2007 Homework 3
4	Arriving at an Architecture	Chapter 5 R. N. Taylor, N. Medvidovic, and E. M. Dashofy. Designing Architectures. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, to appear.
5	Architectural Styles	Chapter 2 Chapter 8: Section 8.2 M. Hauswirth and M. Jazayeri. A Component and Communication Model for Push Systems. 7^th European Software Engineering Conference with 7^th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE’99), Toulouse, France, September 1999.
5	Domain-Specific Software Architectures	W. Tracz. DSSA (Domain-Specific Software Architecture) Pedagogical Example. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, July 1995. R. N. Taylor, N. Medvidovic, and E. M. Dashofy. Domain-Specific Software Engineering. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, to appear.
6	Examples of domain- and style-specific architectures	D. Batory and S. O'Malley. The Design and Implementation of Hierarchical Software Systems with Reusable Components. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, October 1992. R. N. Taylor et al. A Component- and Message-Based Architectural Style for GUI Software. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, June 1996. R. T. Fielding and R. N. Taylor. Principled Design of the Modern Web Architecture. 22^nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2000), Limerick, Ireland, June 2000.	Homework 3 due February 13, 2007 Homework 4
6	Modeling Software Architectures	Chapter 7: Sections 7.1, 7.3 R. N. Taylor, N. Medvidovic, and E. M. Dashofy. Modeling. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, to appear.
7	Architecture Description Languages (ADLs)	Chapter 8: Sections 8.1 and 8.3 N. Medvidovic and R. N. Taylor. A Classification and Comparison Framework for Software Architecture Description Languages. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, January 2000. N. Medvidovic, E. M. Dashofy, and R. N. Taylor. Moving Architectural Description from Under the Technology Lamppost. Journal of Information and Software Technology, 2007.
7	UML and Software Architectures	UML OMG Specification D. Garlan and A. J. Kompanek. Reconciling the needs of Architectural Description with Object-Modeling Notations. 3rd International Conference on The Unified Modeling Language (UML 2000), 2000. M. Abi-Antoun and N. Medvidovic. Enabling the Refinement of a Software Architecture into a Design. 2^nd International Conference on The Unified Modeling Language (UML’99), Fort Collins, CO, October 1999. N. Medvidovic, et al. Modeling Software Architectures in the Unified Modeling Language. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, January 2002.	Homework 4 due February 22, 2007 Homework 5
8	Exam 1 review
8			EXAM 1 (THH 201) March 1, 2007
9	Implementing Software Architectures	R. N. Taylor, N. Medvidovic, and E. M. Dashofy. Implementation. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, to appear. S. Malek, M. Mikic-Rakic, and N. Medvidovic. A Style-Aware Architectural Middleware for Resource-Constrained, Distributed Systems. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, March 2005.
9	Introduction to Middleware	D. Krieger and R.M. Adler. The Emergence of Distributed Component Platforms. IEEE Computer, March 1998. N. Medvidovic et al. The Role of Middleware in Architecture-Based Software Development. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, August 2003. S. P. Reiss. Connecting Tools Using Message Passing in the Field Environment. IEEE Software, July 1990.	Homework 5 due March 8, 2007 Homework 6 Supplementary Files
10	*SPRING RECESS*
11	Exam 1 recap
11	Example Middleware Platforms	S. Vinoski. CORBA: Integrating Diverse Applications within Distributed Heterogeneous Environments. IEEE Communications Magazine, February 1997. R. Natarajan and D. S. Rosenblum. Supporting Architectural Concerns in Component Interoperability Standards. IEE Proceedings - Software, December 2000. C. A. Mattmann et al. A Software Architecture-Based Framework for Highly Distributed and Data Intensive Scientific Applications. 28th International Conference on Software Engineering, Shanghai, China, May 2006.
12	Off-the-Shelf System Composition	V. Basili and B. Boehm. COTS-Based Systems Top 10 List, IEEE Software. A. Egyed, and B. Balzer. Integrating COTS Software into Systems through Instrumentation and Reasoning, Journal on Automated Software Engineering (JASE), to appear. M. J. Maybee et al. Multilanguage Interoperability in Distributed Systems: Experience Report. 18^th International Conference on Software Engineering, Berlin, Germany, March 1996.
12	Off-the-Shelf System Composition (cont.)		Homework 6 due March 29, 2007 Homework 7
13	Architecture-Driven Deployment	R. S. Hall et al. A Cooperative Approach to Support Software Deployment Using the Software Dock. 21^st International Conference on Software Engineering, Los Angeles, CA, May 1999. S. Malek et al. A Decentralized Redeployment Algorithm for Improving the Availability of Distributed Systems. 3^rd International Working Conference on Component Deployment, Grenoble, France, November 2005. M. Mikic-Rakic et al. Improving Availability in Large, Distributed Component-Based Systems via Redeployment. 3^rd International Working Conference on Component Deployment, Grenoble, France, November 2005.
13	Architecture-Driven Deployment (cont.)
14	Dynamism in Software Architectures	J. Magee and J. Kramer. Dynamic Structure in Software Architectures. 4th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, San Francisco, CA, October 1996. P. Oreizy et al. Architecture-Based Runtime Software Evolution. 20th International Conference on Software Engineering, Kyoto, Japan, April 1998. M. Mikic-Rakic and N. Medvidovic. Support for Disconnected Operation via Architectural Self-Reconfiguration. First International Conference on Autonomic Computing, New York, NY, May 2004.
14	Dynamism in Software Architectures (cont.) Overview of Architectural Recovery		Homework 7 due April 12, 2007 Homework 8
15	Ensuring Non-Functional Properties	R. N. Taylor, N. Medvidovic, and E. M. Dashofy. Security. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, to appear. S. Malek et al. A Framework for Ensuring and Improving Dependability in Highly Distributed Systems. R. de Lemos, C. Gacek, and A. Romanowski, eds., Architecting Dependable Systems III, Springer Verlag, October 2005. R. Roshandel et al. Estimating Software Component Reliability by Leveraging Architectural Models. 28^th International Conference on Software Engineering, Shanghai, China, May 2006.
15	Software Architects: People and Teams	R. N. Taylor, N. Medvidovic, and E. M. Dashofy. People, Roles, and Teams. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, to appear.
16	Exam 2 review
16			Homework 8 due April 26, 2007 EXAM 2 (THH 201) April 26, 2007

CS 578Software Architectures