Object-oriented configuration management technology can improve software architectural traceability

Software development is a dynamic process where engineers constantly modify and refine their systems. As a consequence, everything evolves including designs, system's architectural structure, and implementation source code. Software evolution can easily make architectural traceability relationships between software architectural entities and corresponding source code become out of date. This paper suggests the use of object-oriented software configuration (SCM) and version management technology to manage versions of architectural structure/entities, source code, and the traceability relationships among them. The resulting architectural SCM system, MolhadoArch, always keeps architectural entities version-consistent with source code. Consistent configurations are maintained not only among source code but also with the high-level software architecture. MolhadoArch supports the management of both planned and unplanned evolution of software architecture.