Dynamically discovering architectures with DiscoTect

ABSTRACT

One of the challenges for software architects is ensuring that an implemented system faithfully represents its architecture. We describe and demonstrate a tool, called DiscoTect, that addresses this challenge by dynamically monitoring a running system and deriving the software architecture as that system runs. The derivation process is based on mappings that relate low level system-level events to higher-level architectural events. The resulting architecture is then fed into existing architectural design tools so that comparisons can be conducted with the design time architecture and architectural analyses can be re-run to ensure that they are still valid. In addition to the demonstration, we briefly describe the mapping language and formal definition of the language in terms of Colored Petri Nets.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures
            Subjects: Data abstraction

Keywords:
architecture design tools and analyses, architecture discovery, reverse engineering