An Introduction to Software Architecture Quality Evaluation

Software quality is one of the most important characteristics of soitware system and impacts on tne system's effect, cost and efficiency- As is well known, it's better to improve the quality as early as possible, which can reduce the cost in following development and maintenance. Software architecture is the first activity from problem space to software solution space, therefore, the decisions made during this process are significant to software quality. Software architecture quality evaluation analyzes and predicts quality from architecture level, helping make proper architectural decisions and detecting derivation during following development. This paper summarizes the researches in this area, introducing the purpose, content, state of the art and application status, analyzing the difficulties and discussing the future directions.