Systematically reviewing the layered architectural pattern principles and their use to reconstruct software architectures

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews principles and criteria for identifying layers in software architectures, aiding in architectural reconstruction and understanding technical debt in legacy systems.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic literature review of layered pattern principles, identifying six specific criteria and grouping them into four fundamental design principles.

Findings

Identified six criteria for layer identification

Grouped criteria under four core design principles

Synthesized literature on architecture reconstruction using these principles

Abstract

Architectural reconstruction is a reverse engineering activity aiming at recovering the missing decisions on a system. It can help identify the components, within a legacy software application, according to the application's architectural pattern. It is useful to identify architectural technical debt. We are interested in identifying layers within a layered application since the layered pattern is one of the most used patterns to structure large systems. Earlier component reconstruction work focusing on that pattern relied on generic component identification criteria, such as cohesion and coupling. Recent work has identified architectural-pattern specific criteria to identify components within that pattern. However, the architectural-pattern specific criteria that the layered pattern embodies are loosely defined. In this paper, we present a first systematic literature review (SLR) of the literature aiming at inventorying such criteria for layers within legacy applications and grouping them under four principles that embody the fundamental design principles under-lying the architectural pattern. We identify six such criteria in the form of design rules. We also perform a second systematic literature review to synthesize the literature on software architecture reconstruction in the light of these criteria. We report those principles, the rules they encompass, their representation, and their usage in software architecture reconstruction.