Enabling the refinement of a software architecture into a design

Abstract

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 semiautomated 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 this approach to be easily adaptable to different ADLs, to the changes in our understanding of UML, and to the changes in UML itself.