OrionPlanning: Improving modularization and checking consistency on software architecture

Many techniques have been proposed in the literature to support architecture definition, conformance, and analysis. However, there is a lack of adoption of such techniques by the industry. Previous work have analyzed this poor support. Specifically, former approaches lack proper analysis techniques (e.g., detection of architectural inconsistencies), and they do not provide extension and addition of new features. In this paper, we present ORIONPLANNING, a prototype tool to assist refactorings at large scale. The tool provides support for model-based refactoring operations. These operations are performed in an interactive visualization. The contributions of the tool consist in: (i) providing iterative modifications in the architecture, and (ii) providing an environment for architecture inspection and definition of dependency rules. We evaluate ORIONPLANNING against practitioners' requirements on architecture definition listed in a previous survey. We also evaluate the tool in a concrete example of software remodularization.