Reference Architecture synthesis

Definition

Research Question

What are the benefits and drawbacks of reference architectures?

Search String

"software reference architecture"

Inclusion Criteria

  • Any type of empirical study regarding software reference architecture benefits or drawbacks
  • Any kind of outcome constructs used to observe software reference architecture is eligible for inclusion
  • Forward and backward 'snowballing' should be considered for the included papers in order to look for additional studies to be included.

Exclusion Criteria

  • Studies not reported in english
  • The paper must be the primary source of the reported study or data. If the paper just reanalyze or review published study or data it should not be considered.

Papers

  • Technology harmonization - Developing a reference architecture for the ground segment software
  • Architecture-centric software evolution by software metrics and design patterns
  • Modeling of energy-sensitive manufacturing processes
  • REARM: A reuse-based economic model for software reference architectures
  • Safe and Secure Software Reuse - 13th International Conference on Software Reuse, ICSR 2013, Proceedings
  • Evaluating an embedded software reference architecture - Industrial experience report
  • Implications of an open system approach to vehicle health management
  • Space on-board software reference architecture
  • An Overview of the Smart Sensor Inter-agency Reference Testbench (SSIART)
  • PuLSE-DSSA - a method for the development of software reference architectures
  • 2009 Joint Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture and European Conference on Software Architecture, WICSA/ECSA 2009
  • Lifelog Collaboration Framework for Healthcare Service on Android Platform
  • A reference architecture for personal assistant software based in agents and SOA
  • From an e-business revenue model to its software reference architecture
  • A Survey on the Benefits and Drawbacks of AUTOSAR
  • Health management engineering environment and open integration platform
  • Smart environment software reference architecture
  • A classification of software reference architectures: Analyzing their success and effectiveness
  • A reference architecture for improving security and privacy in internet of things applications
  • Towards an improved stakeholder management for software reference architectures
  • Space on-board software reference architecture
  • Feature Management applied to on board software building blocks
  • Software Architecture - 7th European Conference, ECSA 2013, Proceedings
  • Software Architecture - 8th European Conference, ECSA 2014, Proceedings
  • The Concept of Reference Architectures
  • On software reference architectures and their application to the space domain
  • Benefits and Drawbacks of Reference Architectures
  • What is software architecture?
  • Towards a multi-layer architecture for scientific virtual laboratories
  • Concepts and requirements for a cloud-based optimization service
  • Artifacts of software reference architectures: A case study
  • A component-based process with separation of concerns for the development of embedded real-time software systems
  • CIbSE 2013: 16th Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering - 10th Workshop Latinoamericano Ingenieria de Software Experimental - Experimental Software Engineering Latin American Workshop, ESELAW 2013
  • Time and space partitioning security components for spacecraft flight software
  • A framework for analysis and design of software reference architectures
  • Software reference architecture for smart environments: Perception
  • Method for examining software product with software architecture specification, involves determining central structural decisions for product, where consistency between code structure and architecture specification is determined
  • A systematic mapping of architectures for embedded software
  • Software Reference Architectures - Exploring Their Usage and Design in Practice
  • Constraints for the design of variability-intensive service-oriented reference architectures–An industrial case study
  • A framework for software reference architecture analysis and review
  • A reference architecture for scientific virtual laboratories

Evidence

Aggregated Evidence

Conclusion

Research question

Seven effects caused by SRAs increased their belief values after the aggregation. These effects have greater confidence value that any effect before aggregation (i.e., greater confidence level than 40%), and have been reported by at least three out of the five studies

all evidence


            
                
all evidence v2

                
As a result of the aggregation process, several benefits of SRAs have considerably increased their belief value: interoperability of software systems, reduced developments costs, improved communication among stakeholders, reduced risk due to previous experiences, use of best practices, and reduced time-to-market. Regarding drawbacks, the studies agree that an SRAa SRA weakly negatively - negatively influence the required learning curve for developers before they could construct software systems.

The aggregation also identified three effects of SRAs that were contradictory in the literature: SRA complexity, flexibility of suppliers, and terminology conventions. We have analyzed the context of studies that reported these results, and elaborate hypothesis to explain these contradictions.