Concern-Based Assessment of Architectural Stability: A Comparative Study

A concern is any consideration that can impact the software architecture and other artefacts. Sustaining stability of concerns realised in architectural designs is essential to obtain long-lasting software products. It is often assumed that concern assessment mechanisms are effective to predict architecture stability. They are ought to exert a positive or detrimental effect on software stability. In fact, there is a growing variety of concern assessment mechanisms to support the quantification of concern properties in software artefacts. They range from metrics that compute basic concern characteristics - such as concern tangling and scattering - to patterns that represent recurring concern structures.