A type-centric framework for specifying heterogeneous, large-scale, component-oriented, architectures

ABSTRACT

Maintaining integrity, consistency, and enforcing conformance in architectures of large-scale systems requires specification and enforcement of many different forms of structural constraints. While type systems have proved effective for enforcing structural constraints in programs and data structures, most architectural modeling frameworks include only weak notions of typing or rely on first-order logic constraint languages that have steep learning curves and that become unwieldy when scaling to large systems.

We present the CADENA Architecture Language with Meta-modeling (CALM) - that uses multi-level type systems to specify and enforce a variety of architectural constraints relevant to development of large-scale component-based systems. CADENA is a robust and extensible tool that has been used to specify a number of industrial-strength component models and applied in multiple industrial research projects on model-driven development and software product lines.

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Index Terms

• Software and its engineering

  • Software creation and management

    • Software development techniques

      • Reusability

  • Software notations and tools

    • Context specific languages

      • Domain specific languages

    • System description languages

  • Software organization and properties

    • Software system structures

      • Software architectures