A domain specific language for stepwise design of software architectures

Research output: Contribution in Book/Catalog/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Stakeholders have to face requirements in increasing number and complexity. Their translations to system functionalities are often diluted into the overall architecture so that it becomes tricky to undertake future changes. Since information systems are intended to evolve in terms of functionalities and underlying technologies, the link between requirements and design artifacts is primordial. Agile design methods and documentation techniques have emerged in the past years in order to deal with the amount of requirements and to trace the decision process and the rationale sustaining a software model. Also, it is not unusual that numerous technologies with similar purpose are confronted to each other during the design phase. In the present work, we propose an integrated framework combining system requirement definitions, a component-based modeling language and model transformations. Architecturally-significant requirements are explicitly linked to software architecture elements and iteratively refined or implemented by model transformations. Any transformation must be documented, even briefly, and the framework retains the transformations tree. This way, the iterative decision and design processes are completely documented for future reference or modification, i.e, designers can (i) see the mapping between a system requirement and its implementation in the architecture model, (ii) explore design alternatives or apply structural modifications without losing previous versions of the model, and finally (iii), depending on the level of documentation, at least understand partially the reasons why the model is how it is.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMODELSWARD 2014 - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development
PublisherSciTePress
Pages67-78
Number of pages12
ISBN (Print)9789897580079
Publication statusPublished - 2014
Event2nd International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, MODELSWARD 2014 - Lisbon, Portugal
Duration: 7 Jan 20149 Jan 2014

Conference

Conference2nd International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, MODELSWARD 2014
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityLisbon
Period7/01/149/01/14

Keywords

  • Design method
  • Design rationale
  • Model transformation
  • Software architecture
  • Traceability

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