A Comparative Study of Quantitative and Qualitative Views of Software Architectures

In order to obtain a software architecture with the right quality attributes, it is vital to fully understand the benefits and liabilities of all involved architecture candidates. To this end, all possible sources should be used. In this paper we compare a quantitative description of software architectures and the support given for different quality attributes with a qualitative description. In some areas they strengthen each other, but in others they do not. In conclusion, this study shows a need to increase the understanding of the quality strengths and weaknesses of different software architectures.