Multi-objective reconstruction of software architecture

Design erosion is a persistent problem within the software engineering discipline. Software designs tend to deteriorate over time and there is a need for tools and techniques that support software architects when dealing with legacy systems. This paper presents an evaluation of a search-based software engineering (SBSE) approach intended to recover high-level architecture designs of software systems by structuring low-level artifacts into high-level architecture artifact configurations. In particular, this paper describes the performance evaluation of a number of metaheuristic search algorithms applied to architecture reconstruction problems with high dimensionality in terms of objectives. These problems have been selected as representative of the typical challenges faced by software architects dealing with legacy systems and the results inform the ongoing development of a software tool that supports the analysis of trade-offs between different reconstructed architectures