Quality Attributes Optimization of Software Architecture: Research Challenges and Directions

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges and future research directions in optimizing software architecture quality attributes using multi-objective optimization to balance conflicting non-functional requirements.

Contribution

It identifies open challenges and proposes research directions for applying multi-objective optimization in software architecture quality attribute improvement.

Findings

Highlights the complexity of optimizing multiple conflicting quality attributes.

Emphasizes the importance of model-based approaches for architecture optimization.

Outlines key research gaps and future directions in the field.

Abstract

The estimation and improvement of quality attributes in software architectures is a challenging and time-consuming activity. On modern software applications, a model-based representation is crucial to face the complexity of such activity. One main challenge is that the improvement of distinctive quality attributes may require contrasting refactoring actions on the architecture, for instance when looking for trade-off between performance and reliability (or other non-functional quality attributes). In such cases, multi-objective optimization can provide the designer with a more complete view on these trade-offs and, consequently, can lead to identify suitable refactoring actions that take into account independent or even competing objectives. In this paper, we present open challenges and research directions to fill current gaps in the context of multi-objective software architecture optimization.