Software Architecture Concepts Research Articles

Architectural models for global automation systems

Designing automation systems, as in most engineering endeavors, is primarily an architectural problem, involving hardware and software components. The objective of this paper is to introduce the concept of software architecture and styles in designing automation systems, and to describe an object framework for the development of global automation systems.

Evaluation of the suitability of a patient data management system for ICUs on a general ward

The development of the ICUData patient data management system (PDMS) for intensive care units (ICU), by IMESO GmbH, Hüttenberg, Germany, was based on the assumption that processes and therapies at ICU are the most complex with the highest data density compared with those in other wards. Based on experience with the system and on a survey conducted among users at our pain clinic, we evaluated whether the concept of the present software architecture, which sufficiently reproduces processes and data at an ICU, is suitable as a PDMS for general wards. The highly modular and client-centric approach of the PDMS is founded on a message-based communications architecture (HL7). In the beginning of the year 2000, the system was implemented at the pain management clinic (12 beds) of our hospital. To assess its user friendliness, we conducted a survey of medical staff ( n=14). From April 1st 2000 to August 31st 2000, all clinical and administrative data of 658 patients at the pain management clinic were recorded with the PDMS. From the start, all users had access to data and information of other connected data management systems of the hospital (e.g. patient administrative data, patient clinical data). Staff members found the system mostly useful, clearly presented, practical, and easy to learn and use. Users were relatively satisfied with stability and performance of the program but mentioned having only limited knowledge of the program's features. The need for external support during a computer crash was rated negatively. Despite the need for further usage training and improved program performance, the software architecture described seems to be a promising starting point for the construction of a PDMS for general wards.

A comparative study of formal verification techniques for software architecture specifications

With the rapid growth of network computing, the demand for largedscale and complex software systems has increased dramatically. However, the development of largedscale and complex software systems is much more difficult and error prone. This is due to the fact that techniques and tools for assuring the correctness and reliability of software systems lag far behind the increasing growth in size and complexity of software systems. The concept of software architecture has recently emerged as a new way to improve our ability to effectively construct and maintain largedscale complex software systems. The architecture based development of software systems focuses on the architectural elements and their overall interconnection structure. Several Architectural Definition Languages (ADLs) have been proposed for specifying domain specific or general purpose architectures. On the other hand, formal verification is rapidly becoming a promising and automated method to ensure the accuracy and correctness of software systems. In this paper, we survey several architecture description languages and formal verification methods. We present an environment to conduct experiments to study the performance of five different verification tools on software architecture specifications. Based on these experiments, we are able to compare the efficiency of these verification tools in verifying certain software property.

SPECIFICATION OF MULTIMEDIA SOFTWARE SYSTEMS USING AN OBJECT ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE DESCRIPTION LANGUAGE

Despite the growing importance of multimedia applications, we still know relatively little about how to specify, design, and maintain this class of complex applications in a systematic manner. The concept of software architecture has recently emerged as a way to improve our ability to effectively construct and maintain large-scale complex software systems. Under this new paradigm, software engineers are able to do evolutionary design of complex systems through architecture specification, design rationale capture, architecture validation and verification, and architecture transformation. Several architecture description languages (ADLs), such as Wright, Rapide, UniCon, ACME, etc. have been proposed to support the architecture development under this new software paradigm. Although current ADLs more or less support certain features of object-oriented design approach, few of them are purely based on object-oriented paradigm. In this paper, we present an architecture description language — OOADL (Object-Oriented Architecture Description Language) to facilitate the architecture specification of multimedia software systems. This language takes object-oriented paradigm as its backbone, and provides formal semantics for modeling architectures of software systems. It also aims at other goals such as, support for hierarchical refinement, support for reuse of architecture styles, support for analysis, and support for exception handling. We also introduce the default architecture style which brings the features of extensibility and re-usability into the language. Finally, we use OOADL to construct part of the architecture framework of a multimedia system to illustrate the usage and modeling capability of OOADL.

An empirical evaluation of deadlock detection in software architecture specifications

Developing and maintaining largedscale software systems is very expensive. The concept of software architecture has recently emerged as a way to support the evolution of largedscale software systems. Several architecture description languages (ADLs) have been proposed to support the specification of software architectures. However, current ADLs do not provide strong support for the analysis of software architecture properties. On the other hand, various analysis tools have been developed for system analysis in the formal verification community. In this paper, we make two contributions. First, for the tools which are applicable to the property analysis of software architectures, we establish a connection between different analysis tools and the software systems modeled by architecture description languages. Second, we conduct experiments to study the performance of four different analysis tools in detecting deadlocks. Based on these experiments, we are able to compare the efficiency of these analysis tools in verifying certain software properties.

Knowledge-based software architectures: acquisition, specification, and verification

The concept of knowledge-based software architecture has recently emerged as a new way to improve our ability to effectively construct and maintain complex, large-scale software systems. Under this new paradigm, software engineers are able to do evolutionary design of complex systems through architecture specification, design rationale capture, architecture validation and verification, and architecture transformation. This paper surveys some of the important techniques that have been developed to support these activities. In particular, we are interested in knowledge/requirements acquisition and analysis. We survey some tools that use the knowledge-based approach to solve these problems. We also discuss various software architecture styles, architecture description languages (ADLs) and features of ADLs that help build better software systems. We then compare various ADLs based on these features. The efficient methods that were developed for verification, validation and high assurance of architectures are also discussed. Based on our survey results, we give a basis for comparing the various knowledge-based systems and list these comparisons in the form of a table.

Incremental Verification of Architecture Specification Language for Real-Time Systems

The concept of software architecture has recently emerged as a new way to improve our ability to effectively construct large scale software systems. However, there is no formal architecture specification language available to model and analyze temporal properties of complex real-time systems. In this paper, an object-oriented logic-based architecture specification language for real-time systems is discussed. Representation of the temporal properties and timing constraints, and their integration with the language to model real-time concurrent systems is given. Architecture based specification languages enable the construction of large system architectures and provide a means of testing and validation. In general, checking the timing constraints of real-time systems is done by applying model checking to the constraint expressed as a formula in temporal logic. The complexity of such a formal method depends on the size of the representation of the system. It is possible that this size could increase exponentially when the system consists of several concurrently executing real-time processes. This means that the complexity of the algorithm will be exponential in the number of processes of the system and thus the size of the system becomes a limiting factor. Such a problem has been defined in the literature as "state explosion problem". We propose a method of incremental verification of architectural specifications for real-time systems. The method has a lower complexity in a sense that it does not work on the whole state space, but only on a subset of it that is relevant to the property to be verified.

A Modular CIM-Concept for Small And Medium Sized Companies

Modem software architecture concepts offer various possibilities for the forward-looking design of open and modular computer integrated manfacturing systems. Additional, the very flexible organisational structures of small and medium sized companies can be implemented considering restrictions that are caused by commercial and technical influences. Therefore a common, client/server based CIM-concept was developed. This concept faces the implementation of highly integrated CIM-modules als well as the support of existing software packages. Both, the usage of PC's as client-workstations additional to UNIX-data base servers and a layer-based, modular software concept follow the way of an easy enhancement of this CIM solution.