Title :
Stressing Search with Scenarios for Flexible Solutions to Real-Time Task Allocation Problems
Author :
Emberson, Paul ; Bate, Iain
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., Univ. of York, York, UK
Abstract :
One of the most important properties of a good software engineering process and of the design of the software it produces is robustness to changing requirements. Scenario-based analysis is a popular method for improving the flexibility of software architectures. This paper demonstrates a search-based technique for automating scenario-based analysis in the software architecture deployment view. Specifically, a novel parallel simulated annealing search algorithm is applied to the real-time task allocation problem to find baseline solutions which require a minimal number of changes in order to meet the requirements of potential upgrade scenarios. Another simulated annealing-based search is used for finding a solution that is similar to an existing baseline when new requirements arise. Solutions generated using a variety of scenarios are judged by how well they respond to different system requirements changes. The evaluation is performed on a set of problems with a controlled set of different characteristics.
Keywords :
parallel algorithms; real-time systems; search problems; simulated annealing; software architecture; task analysis; parallel simulated annealing search algorithm; real-time task allocation problem; scenario-based analysis; search stress; search-based technique; software architectures; software design; software engineering process; Computer architecture; Hardware; Performance evaluation; Real time systems; Robustness; Simulated annealing; Software architecture; Software design; Software engineering; System testing; Maintainability; extensibility; heuristics; scenarios.; scheduling; search;
Journal_Title :
Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TSE.2009.58