Code and Architecture Review

Overview

Code/architecture review is a systematic examination of some software product source code/architecture intended to find and fix mistakes overlooked in the initial development phase, improving both overall quality of software and developers' skills.

Code/architecture reviews can often reveal and remove common vulnerabilities such as format string exploits, race conditions, memory leaks and buffer overflows, thereby improving software security.

The primary goal of this process is to produce code which is excellent in all respects, behaving as documented and easy for developers to understand.

Expertise

Qulix architects and team leads always perform code/architecture review in the process of software product/solution implementation. All reviews are performed across a predefined checklist which is used as a base for further results reporting. Furthermore, it has been decided to present code/architecture review as an independent service included into Qulix main service package.

As part of this service our software architects carry out the following types of analysis on the basis of customer requirements:

• Architecture validity analysis (used patterns, etc.);
• Scalability analysis;
• Efforts analysis for technology migration;
• Analysis of employed technology appropriateness;
• And others.

Code/architecture review includes the following steps:

• Difference review;

By default the process is iterative and comprises several consequent reviews. As a result of each review a set of recommendations is provided. This stage is meant to compare the results of current and previous reviews to understand whether the changes brought about the desired effect.

• Architecture analysis;

Software architecture is one of the most important elements of any software system, whether it is in preliminary design, active deployment, or maintenance. We believe that understanding of implications of design leads to early detection of errors and to more predictable and cost-effective modifications to of the system over its entire life cycle. Our specialists will evaluate your system architecture and identify whether there are any design flaws, architectural mistakes, potential risks, etc. Specific recommendations will be elaborated afterwards.

• Architecture compliance review;

An architecture compliance review is a scrutiny of compliance of a specific project against established architectural criteria and business objectives. This stage includes review of architectural documentation, verification of its completeness and clearness, as well as verification of its implementation.

• Code review.

The source code is reviewed in context of standards, maintenance and performance. This is the way to identify improperly-implemented requirements, deviations from Coding Guidelines, etc. As a result, our customers gain a very good assessment of whether their code is really doing what it’s supposed to.

Instruments

Specific tools for collaborative code review can facilitate the code/architecture review process.

To perform code/architecture review we use the following instruments:

• NCover;
• Code Analysis;
• Practice Checker;
• FxCop;
• Araxis;
• And others.