Using architecture style to design and evolve complex integrated information infrastructure

System development using domain specific software architecture (DSSA) design approaches address many software engineering concerns. This research demonstrates how a DSSA style (viz. Switchboard) augments the design process and integrates essential missing factors. The DSSA style improves the design process and facilitates the utilization of nontechnical constraint sets by software architecture designers. The Switchboard style was embedded in a tool suite (ArckBuilder), to aid in more effectively mapping the non-traditional factors to the DSSA. Constraints express causal, spatial, or temporal relationships between domain specific social, technical, or socio-technical entities. A field study was conducted at an electric power utility to investigate how software systems were evolved in response to some complex factors such as those arising from deregulation. Software system designers in the electric power industry already utilize certain forms of software architecture representations to offset domain complexity. However, they have difficulty integrating semi- or non-technical factors into their processes and the resulting architectural representations. Such factors are difficult to quantify in any meaningful way for software system architects. It is evident that technical constraint sets associated with software architectures can be used in a reciprocal and iterative validation process with the traditional requirements engineering process. However, it is less obvious how one can utilize nontechnical constraints to discover crosscutting effects.; The Switchboard style is sufficient to represent all known domain states because it meets two conditions. First, the style reflects the domain data, which was cross-referenced from the two field sites. There exists an ongoing reflective validation between the data and style that is verified from emerging events in the industry. The reflective validation was iterative modified using The second sufficient representational condition is exhibited in the use of the style. Information about domain variety is created as the architect explicates crosscutting effects using this architectural framework. The architect is able to manage complexity more effectively by leveraging an idealized resource model incorporated into the Switchboard style. The interdependencies commonly associated with architectural domain resources are sufficiently captured and juxtaposed using categorical constraints with stylistic constraints derived from the data. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...