A Multi-View Architectural Model and Its Description and Construction

Software architecture is one of key factors to the success of modern large-scale software-intensive systems development. Among the existing architectural models, some important aspects are ignored while should be addressed. To overcome this, we propose a multi-view architectural model, which is an extension to the "4+1" view architectural model proposed by Kruchten, and discuss the description and construction techniques for the extended architectural views. We employed the proposed architecture model and relevant description and construction techniques to develop a component based software testing platform. The experience and lessons with application of the proposed architectural model are reported. Results of the case study show that the proposed multi-view architectural model and relevant techniques are useful to the development of large-scale software-intensive systems.