The role of languages in the design-trajectory

Abstract

Nowadays, it is difficult for the industry to keep pace with society's demand of complex, computer-based systems. Intuitively, one would say that this is caused by insufficient technical advancement. Yet, the main reason is our incompetence to handle contemporary technology. Our methods of designing systems are primarily based on experience and heuristics. Long development time and poor design quality are the result. To improve the design-efficiency, research is focused on developing methods to design systems in a structured manner. This paper provides guidelines for building a design-trajectory for a class of systems. To obtain a versatile result, no assumptions are made about the kind of classes we consider. We propose to partition the design-trajectory into three phases: The analysis phase, the architecture phase, and the realization phase. A formal model of the conglomerate of architecture phases of a class of systems is given. This model shows the conditions that should hold in any (automated) design-trajectory.