Taking <i>ArchSync</i> to the Real World

Abstract

Architectural drift is a well-known phenomenon in software development, in which the architecture “as documented” and the architecture “as implemented” diverge from each other over time. To avoid this problem, periodic conformance checks should be in place, allowing architects to detect and correct differences. To this end, we developed a tool approach, called ArchSync, which helps architects to keep the main architectural scenarios of an application in-sync with its code. Our tool relies on heuristics that process application execution traces and correlate them with the intended architectural behavior. Despite being heuristic, ArchSync can bring mismatches upfront and reduce (re-)synchronization efforts. In order to validate these claims in practical settings, we have applied the tool in three medium-size case-studies for different domains. This article reports on the results of that evaluation, and also discusses insights and limitations regarding tool support for checking conformance to architectural behavior.