Over the past decade software architecture design has become an important means for coping with the inherent difficulties of the development of large-scale and complex software systems. Software architecture includes the early design decisions and embodies the overall structure that impacts the quality of the whole system. A common assumption is that software architecture design is necessary for supporting the required software system qualities such as robustness, adaptability, reusability and maintainability.

The talk will provide a contemporary overview of current software architecture design approaches and elaborate on their obstacles. To cope with these obstacles a novel approach called synthesis-based software architecture design (Synbad) will be proposed. This approach builds on the concept of synthesis which is a well-known and widely applied problem solving technique in mature engineering disciplines such as electrical engineering, chemical engineering and mechanical engineering. Synthesis involves the search for sub-solutions for distinct loosely coupled sub-problems and the composition of these sub-solutions into a complete solution. In particular, the synthesis process includes an explicit phase for searching solution domain, searching design alternatives in the corresponding solution domain and selecting these alternatives based on explicit quality criteria.

The approach will be illustrated using the results of an industrial project on the design of an atomic transaction architecture for a distributed car dealer information system.