A Framework for Specifying and Visualizing Architectural Designs

This paper presents a framework for formally formalizing the syntax and semantics of languages for specifying and visualizing architectural designs and describes an instance and prototype implementation of this framework consisting of two languages.

Abstract

Architectural designs specify the components of a software system, their interfaces, and their interrelationships. Module Interconnection Languages (MILs) are useful for specifying architectural designs, but lack an intuitive visual representation similar to the visual design notations found in CASE tools. This paper presents a framework for formally defining the syntax and semantics of languages for specifying and visualizing architectural designs. Also described are an instance and prototype implementation of this framework consisting of two languages: one for specifying designs and one for visualizing them. 1 Background One of the phases of the software development process is the specification of the system's components, their interfaces, and their interrelationships. Throughout this paper, we will refer to the product of this phase as the architectural design. Our definition of architectural design is close to the definition of software architecture given by Schwanke, Altucher, ...