Enabling the Refinement of a Software Architecture into a Design

Software architecture research has thus far mainly addressed formal specification and analysis of coarse-grained software models. The formality of architectural descriptions, their lack of support for downstream development activities, and their poor integration with mainstream approaches have made them unattractive to a large segment of the development community. This paper demonstrates how a mainstream design notation, the Unified Modeling Language (UML), can help address these concerns. We describe a semi-automated approach developed to assist in refining a high-level architecture specified in an architecture description language (ADL) into a design described with UML. To this end, we have integrated DRADEL, an environment for architecture modeling and analysis, with Rational Rose®, a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) UML modeling tool. We have defined a set of rules to transform an architectural representation into an initial UML model that can then be further refined. We believe th...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: UML
• Authors: Marwan Abi-Antoun, Nenad Medvidovic
• Keywords: Architecture, Initial Uml Model, Natural Language Processing, Software Architecture Research, UML 1999