Using Dependency Models to Manage Software Architecture

Neeraj Sangal
President of Lattix Inc.

Friday, 3 February 2006
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Fuller Labs 320

This talk will present a Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) based approach to specify and manage the architecture of large software systems. The system is decomposed into an ordered hierarchy of subsystems with the dependencies between the subsystems presented in the form of a matrix. This yields a number of key benefits: The adaptation of DSM is highly scalable compared to the directed graph approaches that are common today. The specification is precise and architectural violations can be checked automatically. Finally, there are a variety of matrix algorithms that can be applied to organize the matrix in a form that reflects the architecture and highlights patterns and problematic dependencies. The talk will show the actual application of this technique to a real open-source system too see how it can be used to discover, analyze, and manage existing systems. This talk is based on joint work with Ev Jordan (Lattix), Vineet Sinha (MIT), and Daniel Jackson (MIT).

Neeraj Sangal is President of Lattix, Inc. Neeraj was previously founder and president of Tendril Software that pioneered synchronized UML models for Java. Tendril was acquired by BEA/WebGain. Prior to Tendril, Neeraj was the founder and chairman of Metrix Network Systems. Metrix was acquired by HP and Neeraj spent 2 years at HP managing a distributed development organization.

Host: Gary Pollice

Refreshments will be served.