The aim of this study is to provide an efficient and scalable way to evaluate the reliability of different SOFTWARE ar-chitectural styles with regard to correlated COMPONENTs failures. In this way, a method BASED on the discrete time Markov chain (DTMC) model is proposed. In the proposed method, SOFTWARE architecture styles are used for reliability evaluation. The four main styles are transformed into Markov chain models and the transfer matrix is created for them, then using the Bernoulli distribution, the correlation between COMPONENT is shown in the matrix and used in the evaluation process. The proposed method is scalable such that it can be used for large SOFTWARE architectures with heterogeneous and homogeneous styles. The results of the evaluation on the case study show that this method is more accurate than the other methods for reliability prediction of the SOFTWARE architectures. As a result, it is concluded that the proposed method is suitable for the preliminary estimation of the SOFTWARE architecture reliability and can make a better comparison between various architectural styles to choose the best and most suitable one from the available options.

With regard to the society’s need for complicated SOFTWARE and high level of expenses on its DEVELOPMENT, it is necessary to take all stakeholders’ requirements and the demands into consideration, before any investments and put on the design and utilization stages. SOFTWARE architecture is a technical description of a SOFTWARE system that indicates COMPONENTs and their relationships between them. In fact architecture style is a set of principles used by a SOFTWARE architect to design SOFTWARE architecture. Nowadays, this is a common behavior among the SOFTWARE architects in designing any SOFTWARE. As “Performance” is the most important qualitative features chosen for the assessment, the main objective of this research is studying the effect of various styles on its non-functional requirements, using Markov model, so that the architect can choose a suitable style BASED on qualitative and precise criteria. In this paper with regards to the results obtained BASED on homogeneous style, an algorithm has been presented to generalize the assessment method for the heterogeneous styles. Finally, to represent the correctness of the proposed algorithm, an illustrative example has been presented.