Coverity is shipping its Coverity Architecture Analyzer software to help software architects ensure that their intended designs are implemented.

The product is intended to address a situation in which developers, said Coverity CTO Ben Chelf, devise designs and developers write code but there is a lack of assurance that the code meets the intended purpose of the application. This could lead to code that is not secure and cause maintenance problems with the software. Dependencies could arise where no one knows what is dependent on what in the software.

"Organizations will [then] have to abandon their software earlier than they would otherwise and re-architect and redesign it," Chelf said.

"The problem that we're trying to solve is giving organizations the ability to control their architecture over time," he said.

Architecture Analyzer replaces the previously available Structure 101 product but leverages a complete representation of software using Coverity's Software DNA Map analysis system. Software DNA Map provides a representation of the software equivalent to when the software is up and running. Coverity partnered with Headway Software on Structure 101.

With Architecture Analyzer, hierarchies and dependencies are mapped in C/C++ and Java code bases.

Key features include

• Automated architectural visualization, including generation of maps of source code structures
• Detection of architectural security issues
• Setting and enforcement of application architecture
• Detection of architectural and quality issues.

The product leverages Coverity Prevent for static analysis.

Coverity Architecture Analyzer pricing starts at US$7,000 per year for analysis of 500,000 lines of code.