The Blockchain as a Software Connector
Title | The Blockchain as a Software Connector |
Publication Type | Conference Paper |
Year of Publication | 2016 |
Authors | Xu, X., Pautasso, C., Zhu, L., Gramoli, V., Ponomarev, A., Tran, A. B., Chen, S. |
Conference Name | 2016 13th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA) |
Keywords | architectural decision, Architecture connector, Australia, blockchain, blockchain security, Connectors, contracts, cryptography, data handling, decentralized blockchain, decentralized data sharing, Design, design trade-offs, distributed processing, distributed software architectures, Online banking, Peer-to-peer computing, pubcrawl, quality attributes, Resiliency, Scalability, Software, software architecture, software connector, software quality, Trade-off, transactional data sharing, untrusted participants |
Abstract | Blockchain is an emerging technology for decentralized and transactional data sharing across a large network of untrusted participants. It enables new forms of distributed software architectures, where components can find agreements on their shared states without trusting a central integration point or any particular participating components. Considering the blockchain as a software connector helps make explicitly important architectural considerations on the resulting performance and quality attributes (for example, security, privacy, scalability and sustainability) of the system. Based on our experience in several projects using blockchain, in this paper we provide rationales to support the architectural decision on whether to employ a decentralized blockchain as opposed to other software solutions, like traditional shared data storage. Additionally, we explore specific implications of using the blockchain as a software connector including design trade-offs regarding quality attributes. |
URL | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7516828/ |
DOI | 10.1109/WICSA.2016.21 |
Citation Key | xu_blockchain_2016 |
- distributed software architectures
- untrusted participants
- transactional data sharing
- Trade-off
- software quality
- software connector
- Software Architecture
- Software
- Scalability
- Resiliency
- quality attributes
- pubcrawl
- Peer-to-peer computing
- Online banking
- architectural decision
- distributed processing
- design trade-offs
- design
- decentralized data sharing
- decentralized blockchain
- data handling
- Cryptography
- contracts
- Connectors
- blockchain security
- blockchain
- Australia
- Architecture connector