1. Università degli Studi dell’Aquila
Talking to Industries
Software Architecture and Testing
Research
Henry Muccini
DISIM, University of L’Aquila
henry.muccini@univaq.it, @muccinihenry, www.henrymuccini.com
@Amrita University, India – June 2014

2. Researcher at the University of L’Aquila,
Italy
Research
2

3. Research interests
on developing methods and tools for the
analysis and design of software architectures
→Architecture-driven Model-based Testing, Model-
checking, and V&V
→Models Interoperability in Software Architecture
Descriptions
→Multi-view Software Architecture Description
→Group Decision Making in Software Architecture
→Engineering Mobile Applications
→Crowd Testing
M
D
E

4. Group Decision Making in SA
Engineering Mobile Applications
Crowd Testing
Software Architecture Description
4

5. GROUP DECISION MAKING IN SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE
5

6. Group Decision Making in SA (1/2)
6
Multiple stakeholders are involved
Each with different concerns and goals
Context: SA decision-making is a group process
Three decades of research on group
decision making in the business domain
GDM has been studied from multiple
perspectives that includes Psychology,
Organizational Behavior, Operations
Research and Economics
Picture taken from http://apprentiperpetuel.blogspot.com.au/

7. Group Decision Making in SA (2/2)
Goal:
Understand Industrial needs in Group Decision Making
Understand state of the research in Architecture GMD
Improve current industrial practices so to converge
faster to better decisions
7

8. ENGINEERING MOBILE APPLICATIONS
8

9. The problem we want to deal with
9
Recurring issues and challenges in app development
Technical (fragmentation, code reuse, frequent
changes, monitoring analysis and testing, etc.)
Design issues
Limited reasoning in the context
Limited information architecture
engineering
Stakeholder diversity
Best practices for app design and development are available, but mobile
applications are still developed with ad-hoc development processes, and
best practices are still not automated.

10. Goals of our proposal
To codify best design practices into a Model-
Driven Engineering language and framework
10
An
aly
sis
r
App
Developer
Anal
ysis r
Analysis
results
1
A
1 2
A
2 n
A
n
Content Manager
Plugin developers
Navigation
ML
Data
UI ML
UI Designer
MobML
Analysis
MobL
Code
The MobML Framework
Business Logic
An
aly
ACode
Modeling environment for
Mobile Applications
Server Side
Developer
MobML
Testing
Analysis and
Code
Generation

11. Principles
11
Participatory design
Collaborative Design
Multi-view Modeling Languages
Hiding MDE complexities
A
B
C
D

12. ENGINEERING THE CROWD FOR TESTING
12

13. 13
Software Testing
No
dedicated
testing team
Dedicated
(in-house)
testing team
Outsourced
testing
[1500 respondents]
0% 20% 40%
60%
51%
41%
Internal/In-house Testing
2013 2012
[1500 respondents]
0%
10%
20%
13%
20%
Crowd Sourced Testing
(External/Managed Services)
2013 2012
0%
20%
40%
8%
26%
"Centralized" Testing
2013 2012
[World Quality Report 2013-2014]
“IDC and Forrester indicate … an increase in
outsourcing of 15% annually over the next
several years.” [Forrester]

14. Testing Mobile App
14
Taken from [World Quality Report 2013-2014], page 27

15. Summing up…
CROWD TESTING
QA
needs
Mobile
and Web
Outsourci
ng

16. 16
diversity/coverage/realistic
independent and test as a user
payment system
immediate results
Principles

17. Challenges in Crowd Testing
17
Security
breaches
Duplicate defect
management
Measurement
Coverage
critical features
coverage
No control
Lack of
ownership
Reward
mechanism
Communication
and mgmt.
Lack of
standards
Continuous
involvement

18. SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE DESCRIPTION
18

19. Pro:
formal semantics
computable
Cons:
difficult to learn
general lack of tools
prolifetarion
Pro:
not too difficult
same notation for SA
and design modeling
Cons:
not a 100% fit
tool investment
Pro:
of immediate use
perfect for sketching
communicative
Cons:
ambiguous
non automated
19
But.. What Industry needs from Architectural Languages?

20. Goal of the study:
→ to better understand the real needs about using ALs
for software architecture modeling in industry
─ RQ1: What are the architectural description needs of
practitioners?
─ RQ2: What features typically supported by existing ALs
are useful (or not useful) for the software industry?
20
Ivano Malavolta, Patricia Lago, Henry Muccini, Patrizio Pelliccione, Antony Tang: What Industry Needs from
Architectural Languages: A Survey. IEEE TSE 39(6): 869-891 (2013)

21. C1: need of models interoperability
multiple languages are used to describe the architecture of a
software system
C2: need of extending existing ALs
C3: need of creating, storing, re-using, views and
Architecture Frameworks
C4: need of communicative and analytic AL
21

22. Darwin/FSP
ACME
AADL
xADL
SA UML profiles
other ADLs
pivot
metamodel
(A0)
Extended/customized ADL
generated in byADL
BPMN
FTVP
1
VP
1
VP
2
VP
2St1
MK1
Composed AF
generated in MEGAF
MEGAF: a model-driven infrastructure for building reusable
and extensible architecture frameworks
MEGAF: a model-driven infrastructure for building reusable
and extensible architecture frameworks
DUALLy: an automated approach for ADLs interoperabilityDUALLy: an automated approach for ADLs interoperability
byADL: an approach to adapt and customize existing ADLsbyADL: an approach to adapt and customize existing ADLs

23. MEGAF
DUALLy
EMF
AM3 AMW ATL
AMMA
byADL
other
engines
MEGAF

24. megaf.di.univaq.it
• Preliminary prototype in Eclipse, using
megamodeling techniques
dually.di.univaq.it
• Prototype in Eclipse, using model-driven
engineering techniques
byadl.di.univaq.it
• Prototype in Eclipse, using model-driven
engineering techniques