Service Oriented Solution Modeling and Variation Propagation Analysis based on Architectural Building Blocks

In spite of the widely recognized benefits of applying Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to design enterprise-scale software systems, its actual application practice is not always a success. One major reason is the lack of a systematic engineering process and tool supported by reusable architectural artifacts. Toward this ultimate goal, this paper proposes a new method of architectural building blocks (ABB)-based SOA solution design and it is applicable to any layered or tiered infrastructure. We present the modeling of solution-level architectural artifacts and their relationships, whose formalization enables event-based variation notification and propagation analysis. The goal is to provide architecture-level support for configuration and re-configuration of architectural artifacts based on industry practices. Our method also supports solution-level project variation management for the process of updating and maintaining architectural artifacts. We report a prototype tool that we have developed and describe how we extend the Unified Modeling Language (UML) mechanism to implement the system and enable solution-level enforcement as an example. The prototype has been applied in real projects as an SOA solution modeling tool.