Rainer Weinreich studied Computer Science at the Johannes Kepler University Linz. During his studies he worked for VAI in the area of process control and for IBM in the area of power plant optimization. He started his scientific work in the area of software architecture prototyping in a research cooperation with the University of Zürich and Siemens AG Germany. During his PhD he worked as a technical project lead in the development of object-oriented C++ frameworks for process control with VAI. He finished his PhD on object-oriented construction principles and techniques (patterns) for distributed process control systems with distinction in 1992.
As a researcher and project lead of the CD-Laboratory for Software Engineering (head: Prof. Pomberger) Rainer Weinreich worked on distributed object-oriented middleware and explored basic concepts of component-based software systems and architectures. In 1997 he spent several months as a visiting researcher with Prof. Clemens Szyperski at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia. At this time he developed the component composition framework, which explored concepts like component trading and dependency injection, later found in component frameworks like OSGi and EJB. In 2000 Rainer Weinreich was one of the authors of a book on Component-Based Software Engineering edited by Heineman and Council.
From 2000 he worked as the principal investigator on advanced component frameworks based on mobile agent technology in a research cooperation with Siemens Munich and Siemens Erlangen. The resulting agent-based component framework was used for remote supervision of process-control systems at Thyssen-Krupp AG. Work in this area explored concepts found in dynamically adaptable distributed software systems. He also acted as a module lead for the Department of Business Informatics at JKU in the EU-project AMPA – Automatic Plausibility Analysis of Test Data (lead by Prof. Klement at JKU and with AVL-Austria as one of the industrial partners). From 2002 Rainer Weinreich has also been working as a senior researcher at the Software Competence Center Hagenberg (SCCH) and as a lecturer for component technology and software architecture at the University of Applied Sciences, also in Hagenberg. Since about this time he started working in the area of enterprise software architecture with the GRZ IT Center Linz (now Raiffeisen Software – RSG) and the SCCH where he developed component models for using portal technology in integrated workplace solutions, a versioning model for enterprise services, and a SOA governance and life cycle model. In 2007 Rainer Weinreich started the LISA-project in cooperation with the SCCH with the aim to provide a consolidated and integrated architecture language for heterogeneous and service-oriented business information systems. LISA combines aspects of architecture description languages and architecture management tools, and provides support for software architecture extraction, visualization, analysis, and knowledge management.
His current research focuses on topics related to software architecture, including software architecture design, software architecture analysis, software architecture knowledge management and software architecture documentation. Recent research topics are monitoring, decision guidance, and documentation support for microservice architecture, and on-demand knowledge management for large-scale enterprise software architecture. He is also interested in facilitating gamification for knowledge capturing and provisioning.
Rainer Weinreich has published more than 70 articles in international journals and conference proceedings. He also is a program committee member of leading conferences in the area of software architecture and software engineering and a regular reviewer of international journals and magazines such as Elsevier Information and Software Technology, Journal of Systems and Software, Future Generations of Computer Systems and IEEE Software. He has received a best reviewer award and has been named a top 10% reviewer for the International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA) based on Review Quality Collector (RQC) and a distinguished reviewer of Elsevier JSS and SCP.
He teaches courses on software engineering, software architecture, and service engineering for bachelor and master programs in computer science and business informatics at the JKU. He has supervised and co-supervised several PhD theses, more than 50 master theses and several bachelor theses in business informatics and computer science programs at the JKU.