CAST ARCHITECTURE CHECKER

Even the most beautiful architecture can be ruined by a single line of code. Gartner Research

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Architectural Challenges

The integration of systems, applications into products

and services provides most of the differentiated value

in today's marketplace. Simultaneously integration

challenges represent the primary sources of

uncertainty, complexity, and cost of developing and

maintaining systems. The ability to monitor system

adherence to architecture is central to successful

system modifications and ensuring system integrity.

Architectural challenges:

• Complexity - As systems evolve its complexity

increases unless work is done to maintain or

reduce it.

• Ivory tower - Grand designs are thrust from above

with little implementation guidance.

• Developer / Architect Disconnect - Developer’s

don’t understand the architecture and architects

don’t understand the code - and there’s no check

that implementation matches the design.

• Big architecture upfront in an agile world - Trying

to do everything upfront when an evolutionary

approach is needed.

“There are two ways of

constructing a software

design: One way is to make

it so simple that there are

obviously no deficiencies,

and the other way is to make

it so complicated that there

are no obvious deficiencies.

The first method is far more

difficult.”

C.A.R. Hoare

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Protects design patterns from degradation

Developers lack of understanding of architectural

decisions and design patterns contributes to

architectural drift over time. Lack of visibility into

the implementation prevent objective assessment

of architecture state versus its intended design.

Creates more secure systems

50% of security problems result from design flaws.

You cannot find design defects by staring at code -

higher-level architectural risk analysis and checks

are essential to building secure systems.

Reduces the impact of architectural defects

Architectural defects or multi-component code

Defects (MCD) require changes to multiple

components. Although they consist of less than

10% of known defects they require 20 times more

changes to remediate – accounting over 50% of all

remediation effort. Eliminating MCDs represents

the single greatest opportunity to reduce technical

debt.

(Gary McGraw in Build Security In)

Li, et al., ( 2011). Characteristics of multi-component defects and architectural hotspots: A large system case study. Empirical Software Engineering, 16 (5), 667-702.

“Most software today

is very much like an

Egyptian pyramid with

millions of bricks piled on

top of each other, with no

structural integrity, but

just done by brute force

and thousands of slaves.”

Alan Kay

Value of Visibility into Architecture

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CAST Architecture Checker allows you describe the

layers and dependencies of a system to enable an

automated verification of the implementation

against its design.

Through a visual interface you can describe the

architecture, system dependencies and define rules

that are used to verify the architecture.

As part of the CAST Application Intelligence

Platform, Architecture Checker enhances

architectural analysis with code quality metrics and

application health scores along with the compliance

feedback of the actual applications construction.

Architecture conformance ensures that the system:

Provides the required functionality.

Adheres to the stated standards including syntax

and semantic rules specified.

Adheres to the stated architectural principles

such as open source.

Is implemented as designed and verifies code

reuse and frameworks.

CAST Architecture Checker

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Visually Define Critical Applications

Access library of layers or

objects to describe your

application.

A Layer is a list of conditions generated from a CAST analysis. Drag and drop from the Layer & Sets menu to define the various layers and their relationships.

Drag and drop library components

to define application layers.

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Define authorized or

forbidden dependencies

Define Application Layers and Dependencies

Depending on your requirement, you can describe an application by defining authorized dependencies between layers or define forbidden dependencies.

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Interactive Architecture Compliance Checking

The architectural description

becomes a CAST Quality Rule.

The rule is used to verify the

application each time a CAST

analysis is performed.

Reports of rule compliance informs adoption of frameworks and reuse practices.

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Select the Red links to view a

list of violations. You can see

both the caller and the called

object as well the source code.

Frameworks have taken a huge place in IT

appl. Dev Still this not well mastered by IT

& SI teams, thus need for strong checks

Automated Compliance Against Design

End-to-end analysis of different languages, technologies and roles is mandatory for objective and effective architectural analysis.

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Visibility - IT leaders in large organizations must be

certain that the software architectural design is

being implemented and adhered to. But in an era

when more developers are deploying and coding

faster than ever, architectural reviews need to

happen at the speed of your development teams’

deployment.

Define architectural guidelines at the beginning of

your project. Then perform consistent checks with

each new iteration to ensure compliance.

Avoid Risk – Catching architectural errors early

will reduce the cost and risk of outages in the

short term while reducing the maintenance

effort of the system over its lifespan.

Communicate – Documenting and sharing

architectural dependencies while including real

time feedback to development teams leads to

high quality and high performing systems.

Automated Architectural Compliance

“He that will not

apply new remedies

must expect new

evils; for time is the

greatest innovator. ”

Francis Bacon

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About CAST

“Out of clutter

find simplicity.”

Albert Einstein

CAST is a pioneer and world leader in Software

Analysis and Measurement, with unique

technology resulting from more than $100

million in R&D investment. CAST introduces

fact-based transparency into application

development and sourcing to transform it

into a management discipline. More than 250

companies across all industry sectors and

geographies rely on CAST to prevent business

disruption while reducing hard IT costs.

CAST is an integral part of software delivery

and maintenance at the world's leading IT

service providers such as IBM and Capgemini.

Founded in 1990, CAST is listed on NYSE-

Euronext (Euronext: CAS) and serves IT intensive

enterprises worldwide with a network of offices

in North America, Europe and India. For more

information, visit www.castsoftware.com