Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 13, numbers 1 and 2, 2020 // View article

Coping with Technological Diversity by Mixing Different Architecture and Deployment Paradigms

Authors:
Philipp Helle
Stefan Richter
Gerrit Schramm
Andreas Zindel

Keywords: model-based systems engineering; microservices; REST; component-based development; aircraft development process.

Abstract:
In a time when competition and market in aviation industry drive the need to shorten development cycles especially in early phases, both automation of processes and integration of tools become important. While constraints, such as make or buy decisions or corporate Information Technology (IT) governance influence the overall tool infrastructure in different directions, microservices are a fast-rising trend in software architecting. But that does not mean that the more traditional monolithic software architecture is dead. A resulting mixed-paradigm software architecture can also be seen as an opportunity to profit from the best of both worlds. To support a newly developed complex system development approach called SCM modeling, a supporting application framework prototype is subject to development with the objective to reduce both time and resources required during product development cycles. This paper describes the software architecture styles and deployment approaches that were used in a research project at Airbus for building a prototype and discusses challenges and opportunities that were encountered. Furthermore, it describes a change in the aircraft development process to cope with the increasing complexity of products and pressure from the market to develop aircraft faster. The key process change is a deviation from the traditionally linear development approach and the inclusion of an Out-of-Cycle (OOC) development phase, where components of an aircraft are developed preemptively, out-side of a program development effort.

Pages: 92 to 103

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2020. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2020

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2628