J. Andrés Díaz Pace - Research: ArchMatE

The ArchMate approach provides tool assistance for the derivation of basic object-oriented models from architectural models. To do so, the approach is based on quality-attribute information, architectural styles and role specifications.

Context

Given the difficulties of conventional object technologies to deal with quality-attribute concerns, software architectures appear as an interesting approach to manage them better. A problem to make this approach feasible is the gap between architectural and object models. Succeeding in bridging these two worlds implies that those design decisions about quality attributes made at the architectural level should be reflected at the object level. Nonetheless, a given architecture usually admits multiple, different materializations. Furthermore, any materialization requires considerable design background and experience from the developer.

ArchMatE is a tool approach to assist developers in the exploration of object-oriented solutions for grounding specific architectural models. An important aspect of the approach is that the materializations are accomplished by means of quality-oriented strategies, so that those concerns prescribed by the original architecture are mostly preserved.

Current Objectives

• Improvement of the materialization rules
• Analysis of a taxonomy of connectors
• Support for UML2 and UMCs as architectural notation
• Development and study of more case-studies

Implementation

• The current ArchMatE prototype is implemented in Java, where the input architecture comes expressed in the Acme ADL and the materialization rules are written in JavaLog
• The tool is now subject to re-design

Related Publications

• Materialization Patterns: A Bridge Between Software Architecture and Object-oriented Design. Germán Vazquez, Marcelo R. Campo and J. Andrés Díaz Pace. To appear in Proceedings ASSE´06 (Argentine Symposium on Software Engineering). 35 JAIIO. September 2006, Mendoza, Argentina.

• ArchMatE: From Architectural Styles to Object-oriented Models through Exploratory Tool Support . Díaz Pace, J. Andrés - Campo, Marcelo R. Proceedings OOPSLA 2005, Pp. 177-132. International Conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications. October 16-20th, San Diego, CA, USA. 2005
• Exploring Quality-driven Object-oriented Materializations for Software Architectures. Díaz Pace, J. Andrés - Diez, Alejandra C. - Campo, Marcelo R. Proceedings SBES ´04, 18th Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering. Pp. 257-273. October 18-22th, 2004. Brasília – Brazil
• Object-oriented Materialization of Software Architectures . Díaz Pace, J. Andrés - Diez, Alejandra C. - Campo, Marcelo R. Proceedings ASSE - 33 JAIIO 2004 - SADIO. Buenos Aires, Argentina. September 2004.

For more information, contact to adiaz@exa.unicen.edu.ar