An Exploratory Case Study Using CBSP and Archium

The need for architectural rationale has long been recognized, but unfortunately it has remained a relatively unexplored area of research in software architecture. However, there is growing interest in methods for capturing the rationale behind software architectures. We summarize two of these methods (CBSP and Archium), present an exploratory case study using both methods to evolve a real software system, and then use the results from this case study to analyze and compare these methods. From this analysis, we conclude that the CBSP and Archium methods are complementary rather than competing because of their respective strengths and weaknesses.