Beyond components-connections-constraints: dealing with software architecture difficulties

Recent work in the area of software architectures is exploring the use of formal methods for specification and analysis of software architecture designs. The work is particularly aimed at achieving better possibilities for evolution, sharing and reuse among software entities. However, it is believed that specifying architecture components and connections without revealing their underlying design assumptions increases the problems with evolution, their reuse and even interoperability among independently operating components. The paper reveals some of the issues underlying architectural difficulties and concludes that implicit design assumptions pose obstacles. We ascertain that separation of architecture ontology from its design modeling is necessary and provides enough context to examine the assumptions behind the central design decisions in architecture abstractions. We propose a basic architecture ontology that is aimed at providing a formal reconciliation of architecture design assumptions and discuss its usefulness to software engineering.