π-ADL

Abstract

A key aspect of the design of any software system is its architecture. An architecture description, from a runtime perspective, should provide a formal specification of the architecture in terms of components and connectors and how they are composed together. Further, a dynamic or mobile architecture description must provide a specification of how the architecture of the software system can change at runtime. Enabling specification of dynamic and mobile architectures is a large challenge for an Architecture Description Language (ADL). This article describes π-ADL, a novel ADL that has been designed in the ArchWare European Project to address specification of dynamic and mobile architectures. It is a formal, well-founded theoretically language based on the higher-order typed π-calculus. While most ADLs focus on describing software architectures from a structural viewpoint, π-ADL focuses on formally describing architectures encompassing both the structural and behavioural viewpoints. The π-ADL design principles, concepts and notation are presented. How π-ADL can be used for specifying static, dynamic and mobile architectures is illustrated through case studies. The π-ADL toolset is outlined.