Exploring Web Search Engines to Find Architectural Knowledge

Software engineers need relevant and up-to-date architectural knowledge (AK), in order to make well-founded design decisions. However, finding such AK is quite challenging. One pragmatic approach is to search for AK on the web using traditional search engines (e.g. Google); this is common practice a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2021 IEEE 18th International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA) pp. 162 - 172
Main Authors Soliman, Mohamed, Wiese, Marion, Li, Yikun, Riebisch, Matthias, Avgeriou, Paris
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.03.2021
Subjects
Architecture knowledge Architecture design decisions Search engines
Computer architecture
Internet
Knowledge engineering
Search engines
Service-oriented architecture
Software
Software architecture
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Summary:Software engineers need relevant and up-to-date architectural knowledge (AK), in order to make well-founded design decisions. However, finding such AK is quite challenging. One pragmatic approach is to search for AK on the web using traditional search engines (e.g. Google); this is common practice among software engineers. Still, we know very little about what AK is retrieved, from where, and how useful it is. In this paper, we conduct an empirical study with 53 software engineers, who used Google to make design decisions using the AttributeDriven-Design method. Based on how the subjects assessed the nature and relevance of the retrieved results, we determined how effective web search engines are to find relevant architectural information. Moreover, we identified the different sources of AK on the web and their associated AK concepts.
DOI:10.1109/ICSA51549.2021.00023