Towards an infrastructure for empirical research into software architecture: challenges and directions.

While the software engineering community at large has embraced empirical studies of source code, empirical studies of software architecture are lacking. In order to increase the possibility and relevance of studies into software architecture, an infrastructure for sharing empirical data on software architecture is essential. This paper contributes by discussing needs and challenges in empirical studies of software architecture. Based on lessons learned we propose CoSARI - a community-wide infrastructure for empirical research into software architecture.