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A survey on quality attributes in servicebased systems
Ameller, David; Galster, Matthias; Avgeriou, Paris; Franch Gutiérrez, Javier
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Departament d'Enginyeria de Serveis i Sistemes d'Informació; Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. inSSIDE - integrated Software, Service, Information and Data Engineering
Service-based systems have become popular in the software industry. In software engineering, it is widely acknowledged that requirements on quality attributes (e.g., performance, security, reliability) significantly impact the design of software systems. This study explores the role of quality attributes during the design of service-based systems. We investigate the significance of quality attributes when designing service-based systems and how quality attributes are addressed through design decisions, across application domains, and related to other aspects of software development, e.g., architecture documentation. We conducted a descriptive survey. The survey was done as an online questionnaire targeting practitioners. Furthermore, we included researchers with practical design experience. We obtained 56 valid responses. Most survey participants consider quality attributes and functionality as equally important and treat quality attributes explicitly rather than implicitly. Furthermore, dependability is the most relevant quality attribute in service-based systems; we do not find quality attributes that are particularly important in specific application domains. Most quality attributes are addressed by ad hoc decisions, rather than established architecture or design patterns or technologies. Only few decision alternatives are considered when making architectural decisions to address quality attributes. Our results partially confirm anecdotal evidence from current literature, but also strengthen previous claims by providing empirical evidence. Our results point to future research directions (e.g., exploring the impact of decision types on how well quality attributes can be achieved) and implications for practitioners (e.g., training makes a difference to how quality attributes are treated).
Peer Reviewed
-Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Enginyeria del software
-Quality attributes
-Service-based systems
-Software design
-Survey Empirical study
-Programari--Disseny
Article - Submitted version
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