Towards More Flexible Architecture Description Languages for Industrial Applications

Abstract

Abstract. Architecture Description Languages (ADLs) have emerged in recent years as a tool for providing high-level descriptions of software systems in terms of their architectural elements and the relationships among them. Most of the current ADLs exhibit limitations which prevent their widespread use in industrial applications. In this paper, we discuss these limitations and introduce ALI, an ADL that has been developed to address such limitations. The ALI language provides a rich and flexible syntax for describing component interfaces, architectural patterns, and meta-information. Multiple graphical architectural views can then be derived from ALI's textual notation.

ALI: An Extensible Architecture Description Language for Industrial Applications

“…A number of potential limitations demonstrated by current ADLs were identified in previous work [3]. Among these limitations are: over constraining syntax, single view presentation of the architecture and lack of tool support.…”

“…The ALI ADL has been designed to address these limitations. The rationale behind the ALI notation was discussed in [3]. Among the main concepts driving the ALI notation are: flexible interface description, architectural pattern description, formal syntax for capturing meta information, and linking the feature and architecture spaces.…”

“…In this paper, we introduce the different parts of the ALI notation to show how the goals of [3] are realized in the language. ALI comprises seven parts: .…”

Modelling large-scale information systems using ADLs – An industrial experience report

“…Portfolio state read from "pmgmt" and order lists written to "ordermgmt" 4 Job Processor UI Server Msg OrderList Update The Job Processor sends a status message indicating that new order lists exist, which is routed to the UI Server 5 UI Server AMSdb DB "ordermgmt" and "pmgmt" schemas…”

“…However, there is limited evidence of significant industrial use of the ADLs that have been produced, which we believe is for a number of reasons [4,5] including the narrow focus of most ADLs and the mismatch between their strengths and the needs of practitioners. This is particularly marked in the information systems domain, where it is difficult to find any large-scale use of ADLs, whereas there has been some documented use of ADLs in embedded and real-time systems [3,6,7].…”