As the design of software architectures emerges as a discipline within software engineering, it will become increasingly important to support architectural description and analysis with tools and environments. In thk paper we describe a system for developing architectural design environments that exploit architectural styles to guide software architects in producing specific systems. The primary contributions of this research are (a) a generic object model for representing architectural designs; (b) the characterization of archhectural styles as specializations of this object model; and(c) a toolkit for creating an open architectural design environment from a description of a specific architectural style. We use our experience in implementing these concepts to illustrate how style-oriented archhectural design raises new challenges for software support environments.
al. REF propose an object model for representing architectural designs.
Exploiting style in architectural design environments
SIGSOFT '94
Computer Science