A Language and Environment for Architecture-Based Software Development and Evolution

Software architectures have the potential to substantially improve the development and evolution of large, complex, multi-lingual, multi-platform, long-running systems. However, in order to achieve this potential, specific techniques for architecture-based modeling, analysis, and evolution must be provided. Furthermore, one cannot fully benefit from such techniques unless support for mapping an architecture to an implementation also exists. This paper motivates and presents one such approach, which is an outgrowth of our experience with systems developed and evolved according to the C2 architectural style. We describe an architecture description language (ADL) specifically designed to support architecturebased evolution and discuss the kinds of evolution the language supports. We then describe a component-based environment that enables modeling, analysis, and evolution of architectures expressed in the ADL, as well as mapping of architectural models to an implementation infrastruct...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: ICSE
• Authors: Nenad Medvidovic, David S. Rosenblum, Richard N. Taylor
• Keywords: Architecture, Architecture Description Language, ICSE 1999, Software Architecture, Software Engineering