MEthods and MOdels for DIstributed Architectures

This project aims at defining a transformational process to manage the architectures definition from the requirements to the implementation. From high-level specifications, this process will provide guidelines on how to apply predefined transformations in order to solve problems that would not be taken into account by the architecture (efficiency, deployment, protocols, security, etc).

This project uses a general purpose Architecture Description Language (ADL) that is specified by a partial semantics: the language concepts are mapped to semantic elements (Petri Nets) that specify only a part of their semantics. Although this part is sufficient for assembling the components together into an operational architecture, the semantics of the underlying middleware (TCP, CORBA, Web Services, MPI, etc) can be postponed until a further step, as well as the business related specifications.

Finally, the specification of both the middleware semantics and the physical infrastructure allow the system to check the hypotheses and to adapt the architecture to take into account the middleware characteristics.
Hence, the methodological framework should then enable to assemble components in a heterogeneous environment (distributed/local, protocols, LAN/WAN, etc).