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Model-driven synthesis of formally precise, stylized software architectures

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Formal Aspects of Computing

Abstract

Reliably producing software architectures in selected architectural styles requires significant expertise yet remains difficult and error-prone. Our research goals are to better understand the nature of style-specific architectures, and relieve architects of the need to produce such architectures by hand. To achieve our goals, this paper introduces a formally precise approach to separate architectural style design decisions from application-specific decisions, and then uses these separate decisions as inputs to an automated synthesizer. This in effect supports a model-driven development (MDD) approach to architecture synthesis with style as a separate design variable. We claim that it is possible to formalize this separation of concerns, long implicit in software engineering research; to automatically synthesize style-specific architectures; and thereby to improve software design productivity and quality. To test these claims, we employed a combination of experimental systems and case study methods: we developed an MDD tool and used it to carry out case studies using Kitchenham’s methods. Our contributions include: a theoretical framework formalizing our separation of concerns and synthesis approach; an MDD framework, Monarch; and results of case studies that we interpret as supporting our claims. This work advances our understanding of software architectural style as a formal refinement; makes application descriptions an explicit subject of study; and suggests that synthesis of architectures can improve software productivity and quality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92612, USA

    Hamid Bagheri

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 22904, USA

    Kevin Sullivan

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  1. Hamid Bagheri
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  2. Kevin Sullivan
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Correspondence to Hamid Bagheri.

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Stephan Merz, Jun Pang, and Jin Song Dong

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Bagheri, H., Sullivan, K. Model-driven synthesis of formally precise, stylized software architectures. Form Asp Comp 28, 441–467 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00165-016-0360-8

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