Evaluating an Architecture Conformance Monitoring Solution

Architectural rules are often defined but rarely tested. Current tools offer limited functionality and often require significant effort to be configured, automated and integrated within existing platforms. We propose a platform that is aimed at reducing the overall cost of setting up and maintaining an architectural conformance monitoring environment by decoupling the conceptual representation of a user-defined rule from its technical specification prescribed by the underlying analysis tools. The user is no longer expected to encode her constraints according to the syntax of the chosen tool, but can use a simple high-level DSL that is automatically compiled to an executable specification through custom adapters developed to support the interaction with existing off-the-shelf tools. In this paper we analyze three case studies to show how this approach can be successfully adopted to support truly diverse industrial projects. By discussing qualitative aspects of the approach, we investigate limitations and opportunities for improving general quality assessment solutions in general and DSL-based conformance tools in particular.