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Tactic Interaction Web

Run the Tactic Interaction Web MicroSim Fullscreen

About This MicroSim

This MicroSim is a network graph of architectural tactics and the quality attributes they affect. Quality attributes are blue ellipses (Performance, Availability, Security, Modifiability, Consistency); tactics are gold boxes (Caching, Redundancy, Retry, Encryption, Circuit Breaker, Rate Limiting, Connection Pooling, Dependency Injection, Information Hiding); compensating tactics are orange boxes. Green arrows mean a tactic improves an attribute, red dashed arrows mean it degrades one, and orange arrows point to the compensating tactic a tradeoff requires. These tactic interactions are exactly the tradeoff points an ATAM evaluation is built to surface.

How to Use

  1. Click a tactic (gold) to read what it improves (green) and degrades (red); its connected edges highlight.
  2. Click a quality attribute (blue) to see every tactic that affects it.
  3. Click an edge to read the specific mechanism and a realistic example.
  4. Turn on Show Interaction Chains, then click Caching, Redundancy, or Encryption to trace its tradeoff to the compensating tactic it requires (e.g., Caching → degrades Consistency → Cache Invalidation Strategy).

When embedded, use the navigation buttons in the corner to zoom and pan.

Iframe Embed Code

You can add this MicroSim to any web page by adding this to your HTML:

<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/atam/sims/tactic-interaction-web/main.html"
        width="100%"
        scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Grade Level

Undergraduate / Professional

Duration

15-20 minutes

Prerequisites

Familiarity with architectural tactics and quality attributes.

Bloom's Taxonomy Level

Analyze (L4)

Learning Objective

Students will be able to identify at least three tactic interaction chains (where applying tactic A improves one quality attribute but degrades another, which may require a compensating tactic B) and explain why these interactions are ATAM tradeoff points.

Activities

  1. Map a tactic (5 min): Students click three tactics and record what each improves and degrades.
  2. Trace chains (7 min): In chain mode, students trace all three compensation chains and write each as "Tactic → improves X, degrades Y → compensate with Z."
  3. Discussion (5 min): Students explain why a tactic that only ever helps would never appear as an ATAM tradeoff point.

Assessment

Give students a new tactic (e.g., "Load Shedding") and ask them to predict one attribute it improves, one it degrades, and a plausible compensating tactic.

References

  1. Bass, L., Clements, P., & Kazman, R. (2021). Software Architecture in Practice (4th ed.). Addison-Wesley.
  2. Kazman, R., Klein, M., & Clements, P. (2000). ATAM: Method for Architecture Evaluation (CMU/SEI-2000-TR-004).