Using architectural knowledge in process of software maintenance

Software maintenance presents nowadays one of the most critical phases of software system life cycle. Constant changes of system´s requirements or changes related to occurrences of system defects caused that thorough system understanding in order of efficient realization of system´s modifications becomes now an inevitable part of maintenance process. In this paper, we emphasize the importance of system´s comprehension in the context of an early detection of system´s defects by offering the description of its life cycle and classification, but mainly by introducing the principles of architectural knowledge concept. We also propose a new approach of dealing with one of the currently most serious obstacles inhibiting this concept from its further use - the problem of architectural knowledge automatic acquisition.