Formalizing Architectural Connection

As software systems become more complex the overall system structure { or software architecture { becomes a central design problem. An important step towards an engineering discipline of software is a formal basis for describing and analyzing these designs. In this paper we present a theory for one aspect of architectural description: the interactions between components. The key idea is to de ne architectural connectors as explicit semantic entities. These are specied as a collection of protocols that characterize each of the participant roles in an interaction and how these roles interact. We illustrate how this scheme can be used to de ne a variety of common architectural connectors. We provide a formal semantics and show how this leads to a sound deductive system in which architectural compatibility can be checked in a way analogous to type checking in programming languages.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1994
• Where: ICSE
• Authors: Robert J. Allen, David Garlan
• Keywords: Architectural Connectors, Explicit Semantic Entities, ICSE 1994, Ne Architectural Connectors, Software Engineering