Course Information

Spring, 1998

The Bare Essentials

Class Meetings:

Monday and Wednesdays, 10:30-11:50, in WeH4615-A

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	1/21	2/2	2/9	Pipes
		2	2/9	2/16	2/23	Objects
		3	2/25	3/11	3/18	Events
		4	3/16	3/30	4/6	Client-Server
		5	4/6	none	4/13	Retrospective
	Project		2/18	4/1,4/6,4/8	3/11 progress 4/22 final	Design Task

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 1/12	Introduction	(a) Overview, (b) Organization
2	W 1/14	History	Software Architecture in Perspective		Ch 1, Ch 2 (quick scan), DK76 (front section only), PN86
3	M 1/19	Problem Types	Problem Types and Problem Frames		Jac95(selected sections), Pol73, Rec92
4	W 1/21		Architectural Concepts and Issues		GMW97, SG95, Mor93	A1 distributed
5	M 1/26		Problem Frames (Case Study)		Jac95, Fin93
6	W 1/28	Data Flow	Batch sequential, pipeline, process control		Ch 2.2, 2.8, 4.2.1, 4.3.1, B+96 Ch1, 1-11, Ch2, 25-70
7	M 2/2		Tektronix case study		Ch 3.2	A1 discussed
8	W 2/4		Formal models for data flow		AG97b, 8.3.3, 8.3.4, 8.3.5
9	M 2/9	Procedure Call	Information hiding and objects		Ch 2.3, PCW85,Pre95Ch 1 (rec. Ch2)	A1 due A2 assigned
10	W 2/11		Modular decomposition issues: KWIC		Ch 2.3, 3.1, Par72	F1 due
11	M 2/16		Formal models for objects		Ch 6.1,6.7, Spi89, AAG93(selected pages)	A2 discussed
12	W 2/18	Design and Evaluation	How to present a software architecture		ADS,Mar91	Project assigned
13	M 2/23		Modifiability Analysis: SAAM		BCK(Ch 9)	A2 due
14	W 2/25		Tradeoff Analysis: ATA Method		Ch 5, Kaz98	A3 assigned
15	W 3/4	Events	Models of event systems		Ch 2.4, 6.4-6.6, GKN92	F2 due
16	M 3/9		Impl/Formalization of event systems and Java extract		Ch 7.3 Rei90, AAG93
17	W 3/11		Industrial Use of Event Systems		HLA97, AG97a	Project progress report due A3 due
18	M 3/16	Information Systems	Client-Server Systems		OHE96 (pp. 149-169), Ber92 (Ch. 2)	F3 due A4 discussed
19	W 3/18		Shared Information Systems: WWW		Ch 4, BCK (Ch. 7)	A3 due
20	M 3/30		Blackboard Systems		Ch 2.6-2.7, Nii86	A4 discussed
21	W 4/1	Processes	Communicating process architectures		BR95, Ray95	Project discussion
22	M 4/6	Patterns	Patterns and Taxonomies		Gam93, SC96, Kaz97	A4 due, A5 assigned, Project discussion
23	W 4/8		Component-Based Systems		Kon96, MT97b, CW98	Project discussion
24	M 4/13		Case Studies in Patterns		Abo93, BC91	A5 due
25	W 4/15	Notations and Tools	Reverse Engineering of Architectures		KC97, MN97
26	M 4/20		Modern ADLs		Ch 7.1-7.2, 8.1-8.2, MT97a
27	W 4/22		Mismatch		GAO95, Sha95a	Project due
28	M 4/27	Projects	Final Presentations			, ,
29	W 4/29		Final Presentations			,

We also offered this course in the spring of 1997. In case some of the materials are of interest, we have kept the Spring 1997 web site available.