A Rationale-based Model for Architecture Design Reasoning

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Chapter 7 A case study of using the AREL model The case study described in this chapter serves two purposes. It presents an industry case to demonstrate the application of AREL and it uses an empirical study to compare the reasoning capabilities of AREL with traditional design specifications. We choose to use an industry case because laboratory cases do not have the architecture complexity to demonstrate the AREL model. The system used in the case study is a central bank electronic payment system called Electronic Fund Transfer System (EFT). The EFT system processes high-value payment instructions between a central bank and the participating member banks to transfer and settle payment instructions. It is the backbone of the financial system in the South China region. As such, the EFT system has to be reliable, secure and efficient. The EFT system was operational from 1998 for 6 years. It is administered by the Guangzhou Electronic Banking Settlement Center, which is a division of the central bank in China. The EFT System took about two years to design, develop and test, employing over thirty designers and developers. At the time of its development, China was in the process of developing a national payment system standard, so the EFT system architecture had to be adaptable to changes based on the national standards. The system had extensive design specifications to document how it had been designed. In this case study, we have selected a number of key requirements in the functional and non-functional areas to report. We have retrospectively implemented the AREL model to document the design decisions for the EFT system. This retrospective capture of design rationale is possible because the author was the lead architect of the system. In order to validate if the AREL model could facilitate the understanding of design 105
7.1. The EFT system reasoning, a comparison of the original specifications and the AREL model was made in consultation with payment system design experts. The experts who participated in this study are familiar with the design of electronic payment systems. The original specifications were presented and the experts were asked about the design of the system. Answers were obtained based on the design specifications and their prior knowledge of payment systems. These were compared with the answers obtained after the AREL model had been presented later to check if additional understanding could be gained. In this chapter, we discuss the case study in Section 7.1. In Section 7.2, we use the empirical study to validate the AREL method. 7.1 The EFT system The People’s Bank of China Guangzhou branch (PBC-GZ) is a central bank branch which is responsible for the financial monitoring and inter-bank payment and settlement of the financial centre Guangzhou and its neighbouring cities. The Electronic Fund Transfer System (EFT) was built by the author and his team to transfer and settle high value payments between all the commercial and specialised banks in the provincial and neighbouring cities. It serves an area with a population of over ten million people in Southern China. The EFT system also acts as a gateway to connect these local banks to the national payment network. The EFT system comprises the High Value Payment System (HVPS) and Settlement Account Management System (SAM). The backbone of the system is the architecture design which provides the processing services infrastructure for the on-line fund transfers between the member banks and the central bank. Being a mission critical system, the EFT system was carefully designed, thoroughly tested and documented. Although it comprises extensive specifications and documentation, the design rationale was either buried in the text of the specifications or they were not captured. Therefore it might be difficult to understand its intricate design when designers have to analyse the system to make changes. 7.1.1 The EFT architecture overview In this case study, we present the system and software architecture of selected key areas of the EFT system. In particular, the message processing and exchange mechanism is described. This area of the architecture is selected because it involves intertwining nonfunctional requirements such as performance, reliability, recovery and security. Due to confidentiality and security reasons, detailed descriptions of the internal mechanisms of 106
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A Rationale-based Model for Archite
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maintenance. These techniques can h
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Declaration This thesis contains no
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2.2.6 DoD Architecture Framework .
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5.4.6 Risk assessment in architectu
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8.2 The architecture rationalisatio
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12.2 Contributions . . . . . . . .
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6.10 ≪AR≫ and ≪AAR≫ Stereot
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11.13A Process to Synchronise Chang
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5.13 Design Rationale Helps Evaluat
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that architecture design is highly
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1.2. Research motivations and resea
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1.2. Research motivations and resea
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1.4. Structure of the thesis the ch
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Part I Problem Analysis 10
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2.1. Industry practice of design ra
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2.2. Architecture frameworks and de
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Chapter 3 Related work in design ra
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3.2. Why do we need design rational
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3.2. Why do we need design rational
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3.3. Existing methods for capturing
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3.4. Other related studies 3.3.7 Qu
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3.4. Other related studies evolutio
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3.5. How well design rationale meth
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3.5. How well design rationale meth
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Chapter 4 Research methodology and
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4.1. Software engineering research
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4.2. The chosen research and valida
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Part II Architecture Design Rationa
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Page 117 and 118: 6.6. A UML representation of AREL a
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Page 121 and 122: 6.7. AREL usability AE by ≪AEsupe
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9.4. AREL and eAREL traceability ap
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Chapter 10 Architecture decision de
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10.1. Background 10.1.2 Introductio
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10.2. Building a BBN to represent a
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10.3. Reasoning about change impact
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10.5. Summary design object may cau
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11.1. Capturing architecture design
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11.1. Capturing architecture design
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11.2. Checking AREL models Figure 1
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11.3. Tracing AREL models Figure 11
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11.4. Analysing AREL with BBN • S
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11.5. Limitations Figure 11.13: A P
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Chapter 12 Conclusions 12.1 Summary
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12.2. Contributions reasoning metho
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12.2. Contributions implementations
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12.3. Future work architecture deci
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12.3. Future work to examine the co
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BIBLIOGRAPHY [10] B. W. Boehm, Soft
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BIBLIOGRAPHY [37] A. Eden and R. Ka
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BIBLIOGRAPHY [62] J. D. Herbsleb an
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BIBLIOGRAPHY [89] N. Lassing, D. Ri
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BIBLIOGRAPHY [115] D. L. Parnas,
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BIBLIOGRAPHY [142] Z. Simsek and J.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY [167] W. F. Tichy, N.
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Appendix A AREL Tool User Manual 1
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4.1 AREL Check Model When the Check
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4.2 AREL Model Tracing AREL model t
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Figure 9 - result of downward trace
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To initiate the graph’s creation,
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onto the diagram 14 Assign values t
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Useful Definitions The following ar
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) Some projects only c) Not at all
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19. I revisit architecture design d
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Complaint Procedure If you have any
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Privacy Protection Only investigato
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B. Exploring design reasoning. 1. W
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3. Why does the system use asynchro
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C. General Comments on AREL Modelli
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IEEE Computer Society Press. A. Tan
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