Features of Architecture Description Languages

Introduction 1.1 Background: system architecture for system development? The characteristic approach in mature engineering disciplines (e.g. civil and chemical engineering) is to build systems (e.g., buildings or chemical plants) from known solutions such as proven designs and existing components [Shaw90,D'Ippolito89]]. Engineers in mature disciplines also put great emphasis on proactively avoiding costly problems by evaluating the system before it is built [Liu87]. Models of the system's architecture are important tools for applying known solutions and doing early evaluation in mature engineering disciplines. In software engineering, the corollary is modelling the software architecture. By software architecture, we mean the components into which a system is divided at the level of system organization, and the ways in which those components communicate, interact, and coordinate with each other [Garlan93] [Shaw95]. Examples of components include modules, processes or t