Quantifiable Software Architecture for Dependable Systems of Systems

Software architecture is a critical aspect in the successful development and evolution of dependable systems of systems (DSoS), because it provides artifactual loci around which engineers can reason, construct, and evolve the software design to provide robustness and resilience. Quantifiably architecting DSoS involves establishing a consensus of attributes of dependability (from different stakeholders’ perspectives) and translating them into quantifiable constraints. Unfortunately, there are few established approaches for quantifiably architecting such systems with dependability concerns considered at the architectural level. This paper presents a quantifiable architectural approach for evolving hybrid systems into DSoS so that the attributes of dependability can be justifiably translated into constraints and attached to architectural artifacts. Furthermore, it provides a means of quantitatively assessing these characteristics throughout the DSoS development/evolution process. Basically, this approach strengthens system composition in combination with explicit architecting and quantifiable constraints attached to the subsequent artifacts so as to improve the dependability of the intended systems through design inspection via static checking at the architectural level and dynamic monitoring at runtime.

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