model, scope control, dependencies. General Terms

Using reverse engineering techniques, a model of the architecture of a large software system can be recovered from its source code as a large hierarchic graph. In our approach, the hierarchy in the model is represented as a tree, whose nodes correspond to the parts and subparts of the system, such as subsystems, packages and classes. The dependencies between these parts, such as calls to procedures, are represented as directed edges from node to node. Permission edges can be added to the graph to document which dependencies are legal in the architecture. For example, a public edge from a module to one of its procedures could specify that calls are permitted to the procedure from outside the module. It is shown that certain of these architectural models ar