ARCHWARE: Architecting evolvable software

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the ArchWare European Project1. The broad scope of ArchWare is to respond to the ever-present demand for software systems that are capable of accommodating change over their lifetime, and therefore are evolvable. In order to achieve this goal, ArchWare develops an integrated set of architecture-centric languages and tools for the modeldriven engineering of evolvable software systems based on a persistent run-time framework. The ArchWare Integrated Development Environment comprises: (a) innovative formal architecture description, analysis, and refinement Ianguages for describing the architecture of evolvable software systems, verifying their properties and expressing their refinements; (b) tools to support architecture description, analysis, and refinement as well as code generation; (c) enactable processes for supporting model-driven software engineering; (d) a persistent run-time framework including a virtual machine for process enactment. It has been developed using ArchWare itself and is available as Open Source Software. © Springer-Verlag 2004.