Past and future of software architectural decisions - A systematic mapping study

摘要: Abstract Context The software architecture of a system is the result set architectural decisions. topic decisions in engineering has received significant attention recent years. However, no systematic overview exists on state research Objective goal this study to provide Such an helps researchers reflect previous and plan future research. Furthermore, such practitioners understand research, how results can help their decision-making. Method We conducted mapping study, covering studies published between January 2002 2012. defined six questions. queried reference databases obtained initial 28,895 papers. followed search filtering process that resulted 144 relevant Results After classifying papers for each question, we found current focuses documenting only several describe from industry. identified potential topics: domain-specific (such as mobile), achieving specific quality attributes reliability or scalability), uncertainty decision-making, group Regarding empirical evaluations papers, around half use evaluation approaches surveys, case studies). Still, few experiments. Conclusion Our confirms increasing interest This community past ten years Researchers are offered number promising directions, while learn what existing offer.