Axivion Bauhaus Suite - Success Story

Reengineering: Architectural Analysis

Project: Architectural Analysis of a Testing Device's Firmware
Size: 1.5 MLOC C/C++

To assure the maintainability of the software system, the architecture had to be recovered. Previously, this had been done manually by drawing class diagrams using a CASE-tool. Because of the size of the system, it could not be guaranteed that this architecture correctly described the system's structure.

To check whether the manually recovered architecture correctly represented the implemented architecture, it was exported from the CASE tool and checked against the source code using the Axivion Bauhaus Suite. Many unknown dependencies were thereby identified.

This hypothesis-driven approach of architectural recovery is being continued by the customer. Developers are required to model their expectations about the implementation as a hypothetical architecture before touching the source code. By using the iterative nature of the hypothesis-driven approach, the maximal possible confidence in the knowledge of the system's structure can be reached interactively. This way, discrepancies are spotted before any implementation is done and changes based on the wrong structural expectations are avoided.

Additionally, codifying the architecture step-by-step ensures that detailed architectural knowledge is not lost time and again but stored for future reference. So a valuable pool of corporate knowledge is gradually built up.

The success of the project is based on the fact that the Axivion Bauhaus Suite can import arbitrary kinds of data (e.g. UML diagrams) via XML or RSF file formats, which can then be overlaid onto the analysis data. Exported data can be stored in ordinary version control systems and can be smoothly integrated into a development environment.