Software Architecture
Software Architecture Overview
• Extensibility
• Environments
• Architectural Styles
• Real Systems
Software Architecture Research
• Architecture-based Design
• Architecture Description Languages
 • Product Line Architectures
 • Architecture-based Security & Trust
• Architectural Styles
 • Internet Scale Architectures
 • Decentralized Architectures
• Self-Adaptive, Healing Architectures
•  Architecture to Implementation
Projects
• Apigen
• ArchEvol
• ArchStudio 4
• EASEL
• PACE
• xADL 2.0
• Legacy Projects
People
• Richard N. Taylor
• David F. Redmiles
• André van der Hoek
Publications
Institute for Software Research
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-3455, USA
arch@ics.uci.edu

Welcome!

This Institute for Software Research site is a resource of information concerning software architecture. Here, you will find information designed to help software engineers and researchers learn how to use software architecture-based technologies effectively.

UCI's software architecture research is directed at increasing the overall quality of software while reducing both the cost of development and time to market by focusing attention on high-level, principal design issues. We believe that architecture is not just a phase in the development life cycle, but a discipline pervading all phases of development.

Our research in software architecture differs from other approaches because it focuses on four key principles of software architecture:

  • extensibility - to address different concerns, different stakeholder needs, and different desired qualities,
  • environments - to support architecture as a discipline throughout the lifecycle,
  • architecture styles - to capture and reuse intellectual insights that ensure various qualities, and
  • real systems - in addition to using our tools in industry, we use our tools to make our tools.

For more information on software architecture and how to use it effectively, please also read our software architecture overview.

What's New!

[July 2008] Work begins on a new version of ArchStudio.

[February 2008] A protoytpe tool which tracks architectural changes during design as been added to ArchStudio 4. This tool is called EASEL and is an effort to add psudeo change-set-like abilities to the ArchStudio 4 evnrinoment.

[March 2007] Astatechart tool has been added to ArchStudio 4's Archipelago editor.

[November 2006] A completely new ArchStudio — ArchStudio 4 — has been released. Building on the successes and insights of ArchStudio 3, ArchStudio 4 performs faster, has a better and more intuitive user interface, and is fully integrated into the Eclipse development environment.

[November 2006] A architectural style and Java-based framework for supporting architecture-based applications has been developed called Myx. A new version of Archstudio will utilize this new framework to increase the speed and efficiency of event/message passing within a single machine environment.

[June 2006] The ISR Software Architecture Research website has been given a face lift and updated with the latest information.

[January 2006] Demonstrations of decentralized trust management using the the PACE framework are now available!

[March 2005] ArchStudio 3 has been enhanced with an analysis framework, TRON, and a visual editor, Archipelago!

About ISR Software Architecture

The Institute for Software Research's efforts in software architecture research are grounded in the issues involving architecture-based design, from architecture modeling to implementation, addressing issues of architectural styles, security & trust, modeling product lines, and internet scale architectures. We also have a number of software projects available to download.

Please also visit the Institute for Software Research to learn more about our other research areas.
This material is based upon work sponsored by a variety of agencies and sources, including the National Science Foundation under Grant No.s 0205724, 0430066, 0438996, and 0524033, the Boeing Company, and, previously, the Air Force Materiel Command, Rome Laboratory, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under Contract Number F30602-94-C-0218. The content of the information does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the Government or any sponsor and no official endorsement should be inferred. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.