Interesting conferencs

Thre are are some conferences that might be of interest to me next year (2009).

The joint 8th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA) and the 3rd European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA) is the the conference I know of aimed directly at my field of research, software architecture. I will try to submit a paper to it with some results of an interview study last year using the Architecture Business Cycle.

The International Conference on Software Engineering is the most prestigious general conference in my field, but none of the main tracks in 2009 are directly related to my research.

But there are two workshops at the conference that sound interesting: Leadership and Management in Software Architecture and Sharing and Reusing architectural Knowledge

BMW already uses AUTOSAR

I found an interesting article by mistake when checking if this blog would come up in a google search (no, it didn't).
The article is two years old, but I found it worthwhile to read anyway.
Anyway, the article Managing for software success is availible on the web, but unfortunately not through the Automotive Engineering International magazine's web site.

But on the I found another interesting article in the same magazine claiming that the new BMW 7-series already have two ECUs where "ECU software was developed using AUTOSAR". The article is based on an interview with well-known researcher on automotive software Dr. Manfred Broy.

Too bad that neither of these articles have gone through scientific peer review. It makes it so much easier if I wanted to have references to them in my research. But for a blog that really doesn't matter...

Complexity

Sooner or later the issue of complexity always comes up when discussing software architecture.

Since I firmly believe in my colleague Dennis Selin's statement that one of the main purposes of having an architecture is to manage complexity I am interested complexity as a concept. It does seem to be difficult to define complexity, more than "I know it when I see it".
However I have found a few articles on the subject I found worth reading. I welcome other suggestions.

• John A McDermid, Complexity: Concept, Causes and Control, in Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer (ICECCS 2000), 2000.
• Murray Cantor, Understanding complexity, in The Rational Edge, 2007
• Mohsen AlSharif et al, Assessing the complexity of software architecture, in Proceedings of the 42nd annual ACM Southeast Regional Conference, 2004

PS. I will get back to other purposes of software architecture according to Dennis in a later post.

ABB software Architecture Workshop

I visited the yearly ABB Software Architecture Workshop in Västerås on December 16. Very interesting with a good mix of people from industry and academia. I hope I'll get invited next year again.

One of the most interesting presentation, at least for me also working in automotive, was from Scania and how they worked with product line architectures. The approach they had to working with electrical architectures was quite different from Volvo Cars even though we are both working in the automotive sector. This only shows how important the business decisions and company culture are and the necessity to adapt the architecture in order for it to be successful in a company. Since Scania already had a product line approach for the mechanical parts of a truck it was very easy for them to have a similar approach in the electrical system

I held a short presentation about standardised software architecture in the automotive industry. It generated a lot of questions and discussions among the audience which I take as a good sign that my research will be of interest to others.
Here is my presentation available through Google documents:

Introduction to software architecture research

I got an e-mail form one of the master's student at the Software Engineering & Management program who wanted to know more about research on software architecture. Here is my reply...

Some websites of interest:

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/index.html
The homepage of the most well-known research groups on software architecture. You can for example look at their "essential bookshelf":
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/essential_collection.html

http://www.handbookofsoftwarearchitecture.com/
Grady Booch's (of UML fame) website about architecture. You need to register to access the entire website.

http://www.janbosch.com/
Jan Bosch' website, one of the foremost researchers in Europe. Check out his publication list. He has written several "overview" articles as well.

You should also be familiar with ISO/IEC-standard 42010 "Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-intensive Systems" (identical to IEEE Std 1471-2000)

http://www.amazon.com/Software-Architecture-Practice-2nd-Engineering/dp/0321154959
This is the standard textbook about software architecture. If you want an undergraduate text I would recommend
http://www.amazon.com/Software-Architecture-Primer-John-Reekie/dp/0646458418/ref=pd_sim_b_6

http://www.amazon.com/Documenting-Software-Architectures-Beyond-Engineering/dp/0201703726
The best (and only?) book about documenting software architectures

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Object-Oriented-Addison-Wesley/Professional/dp/0201633612
For an architect I would recommend the following book instead:
http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Oriented-Software-Architecture-System-Patterns/dp/0471958697/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228480692&sr=1-1
There are 5 volumes, but the book everybody refers to is vol. 1

For software product lines I'm most familiar with
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Use-Software-Architectures-Product-Line/dp/0201674947/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228480867&sr=1-1
and
http://www.amazon.com/Software-Architecture-Product-Families-Principles/dp/0201699672/ref=cm_lmf_tit_8_rdssss0

But there seem to be recent texts, such as:
http://www.amazon.com/Software-Product-Lines-Practices-Engineering/dp/0201703327/ref=pd_sim_b_2
and
http://www.amazon.com/Software-Product-Lines-Action-Engineering/dp/3540714367/ref=pd_cp_b_1?pf_rd_p=413864201&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=3540243720&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1KC7RGT8ZATZCWGSE3MM

Hope this helps!

Project Presentation

I held a presentation about my research project at the Annual Volvo Industrial PhD Program (VIPP) Conference in October 2008. If it seems very fuzzy with no results it is because I had just begun my research, and I expect to have a much more crisp definition of my research questions in 2009.

The start

I was inspired by an article in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet on blogs, and specially on the popularity of blogs about special subjects, so I thought why not start a blog about my research topic; software architecture.

I honestly believe that I will have something interesting to write about for the small (?) audience besides me also interested in software architecture, and I would love to spark a discussion with a post I write. But I should not kid myself, the potential audience may be extremely limited. And I have no idea on how get readers outside of the group of people who already know me.