Towards domain-specific extensibility of quality-aware software architecture meta-models

Abstract

The evermore extending presence of software systems in ubiquitous application domains requires current software architecture analyses to incorporate domain-specific concepts. Current model extension approaches are too general, do not provide sufficient support for multiple roles in the development process or impose high effort on the extension developer. In this paper, we present MDSD.tools Characteristics, a framework to enhance existing architecture description languages with easy-to-use quality modeling profiles. It facilitates capturing of domain expert knowledge concerning relevant attributes of architecture entities into reusable specifications. Furthermore, it comprises a notion of contextual information with a model-based specification for information propagation to simplify the integration with existing analyses.