Course Information

Spring, 1997

The Bare Essentials

Class Meetings:

Monday and Wednesdays, 10:30-11:50, in WeH3412

Course Staff:

Objectives

Architectures for Software Systems aims to teach you how to design, understand, and evaluate systems at an architectural level of abstraction. By the end of the course you should be able to:

• Recognize major architectural styles in existing software systems.
• Describe an architecture accurately.
• Generate architectural alternatives for a problem and choose among them.
• Construct a medium-sized software system that satisfies an architectural specification.
• Use existing definitions and development tools to expedite such tasks.
• Understand the formal definition of a number of architectures and be able to reason precisely about the properties of those architectures.
• Use domain knowledge to specialize an architecture for a particular family of applications.

Course Materials and Administration

Course mechanics: Assignments, grading policy, and so on

Class bulletin board: cmu.cs.class.cs675

Project groups and hints on presentations

On-line course materials, formatted for web browsing

• Slides from the lectures
• Questions and hints on the readings
• Assignments and project description

Schedule and Syllabus

Assignments and Project Important dates		#	Assigned	Discuss	Due	Topic
	Assignments	1	1/22	2/5	2/12	Pipes
		2	2/3	2/17	2/24	Objects
		3	2/17	2/26	3/12	Events
		4	3/10	none	4/2	Formal Models
		5	4/7	none	4/14	Retrospective
	Project	Progress Report	2/10	4/2 , 4/7 4/9 ,	3/21 (writeup)	See project group descriptions
		Final Report	2/10	4/28, , 4/30,	4/23 (writeup)

Lectures, Reading Assignments, and Assignment/Project Events:

The main text for the course is Shaw and Garlan's Software Architecture: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline [SG96]. The supplemental text is Jackson's Software Requirements and Specifications [Jac95]. In addition, we will read selected papers from other sources. Each lecture (after the first, of course) has hints and questions to guide your reading. Click the button in the Q/A column to see the hints and questions.

Citations in Bold refer to SG96. You are expected to read associated introductory material; for example, an assignment of Ch 4.2.1 includes the paragraph between the Section heading for 4.2 and the actual beginning of 4.2.1. Most of the supplemental readings are in the reading packet; a few others will be distributed during the semester.

Lec #	Date	Major Topic	Lecture Title	Q & Hint	Reading Assignment	Assignment & Project Events
1	M 1/13	Introduction	(a) Organization, (b) Architecture Overview
2	W 1/15	History	Software architecture in perspective		Ch 1, Ch 2 (quick scan), DK76 (omit last section), PN86
3	M 1/20	Problem Types	Problem types and problem frames		Jac95, Pol73, Rec92
4	W 1/22		Problem frames (case study)		Jac95, Fin93	A1 distributed
5	M 1/27	Data Flow	Batch sequential, pipeline, process control		Ch 2.2, 2.8, 4.2.1, 4.3.1, KP84
6	W 1/29		Tektronix case study		Ch 3.2
7	M 2/3		Formal models for data flow		Ch 6.1 - 6.3, 6.7, Spi89 (pp.40-44)	A2 distributed
8	W 2/5	Procedure Call	Information hiding and objects		Ch 2.3, PCW85, Boo86	A1 discussed
9	M 2/10		How to present a software architecture		ADS, AG94 (pp 1-5), Mar91, HNS95	Project distributed
10	W 2/12		Modular decomposition issues: KWIC		Ch 3.1, Par72	A1 due
11	M 2/17		Formal models		Ch 6.1,6.7, Sha85, AAG93	A2 discussed , A3 distributed
12	W 2/19	Events	Models of event systems		GKN92, Ch 2.4, 6.4 - 6.6
13	M 2/24		Implementation of event systems		Rei90, Ch 7.3	A2 due
14	W 2/26		Industrial use of event systems (case study)		HLA97	A3 discussed
15	W 3/5	Design and Evaluation	Patterns and pattern languages		B+96, Mul94, Sha96
16	M 3/10		Using multiple styles		Ch 3.4 - 3.5, SC96, Sha95b, Wolf97 (sec.1-4)	A4 distributed
17	W 3/12		Design guidance		Ch 5, McC97, SC96	A3 due
18	M 3/17	Repositories and related	Evolution of Shared Information Systems		Ch 4
19	W 3/19		Blackboard Systems		Ch 2.6-2.7, Nii86	Progress report due 3/21
20	M 3/31		Enterprise architectures		IBM, Mor93, Ch 2.5, Ch 4.3.4
21	W 4/2	Processes	Communicating process architectures		And91	Project discussion ,
22	M 4/7		Agents and mediators		SD+96, Wh96, Wie95	A4 due, Project discussion
23	W 4/9		Formal models for processes		Ch 8.3, AG97, Al97 Supplemental reading: Hoa85	A5 distributed, Project discussion ,
24	M 4/14	Modern ADLs	Aesop and UniCon		Ch 7.1 - 7.2, 8.1 - 8.2	A5 due
25	W 4/16	Interoperability	Integration architectures and emerging standards		Man95, Hei95
26	M 4/21		Mismatch experience		GAO95, Sha95a, Ock95, SK96
27	W 4/23		Mismatch repair		PA91, YS94, WCZ97	Project due
28	M 4/28	Projects	Final Presentations: Taliesin, Tower of Pisa, Hall of Supreme Harmony			, ,
29	W 4/30		Final Presentations: Fallingwater, Parthenon			,

We also offered this course in the spring of 1996. Some, but not all, of the materials were converted and released on the Web. In case some of the materials are of interest, we have kept the Spring 1996 web site available.