Retriever: A View-Based Approach to Reverse Engineering Software Architecture Models

Software systems are constantly evolving and growing in complexity. The challenge of understanding and managing these systems has led to a shift towards automated extraction of models from software artifacts. However, extracting architectural models for web service or microservice systems is challenging due to the heterogeneity of formats, languages, and semantics. This challenge arises from the independent deployment and loose coupling of services, as well as the diverse technologies and platforms that comprise the heterogeneous artifacts. We addresses this issue with two ideas: a knowledge representation model for diverse artifacts and a framework for integrating individual views into a unified architectural model. The former involves transformations that consider relationships and concepts. The latter uses model transformation and fusion techniques to create a unified model based on an existing metamodel. This work goes beyond the current state of the art by introducing an approach for reconstructing software architectures and combining model-driven reverse engineering processes to capture information across multiple views. As evidence of its applicability and accuracy, we report on its application in real projects of different sizes. ... mehrOur evaluation shows scalability in generating architectural models and can reconstruct the components of a software system and their interactions.