Detection of conflicts and inconsistencies between architecture solutions

This paper presents a semi-automated approach for detecting conflicts and inconsistencies between architecture solutions. Inconsistencies occur when two or more architecture solutions rely on each other but cannot be satisfied, and conflicts when there are contradictions within one single decision specification, such as contradictory variable range and value. The proposed approach comprises a set of checks followed by transformations of architecture solutions specified according to a domain-specific-language, also created in the context of this work, into state machines. The semi-automated approach is implemented as a plugin for the MagicDraw modeling tool, and was evaluated in a project from the automotive domain.