ART (2002, 2003)
UML Tool Kit for Software Architecture Modeling and Analysis
Introduction
UML has become a standard that is widely followed and understood in the
industry. While UML has established itself in detailed software design,
its usage as an alternative to the current architecture description
languages has been found somewhat problematic in the industry. In this
project, we adopt the concept of UML profiles in architecture design.
Architecture profiles are UML profiles that are specialized for software
architecture design process and software architecture description. These
profiles present an appropriate abstraction level to elaborate the
architecture styles and rules. During the project, a general schema for
arranging architecture profiles is developed, together with a set of
conformance rules for validating architecture design against the
profiles. As a result, the project is developing a practical tool
(artDECO) for checking and enforcing the conformance rules, integrated
with Rational Rose.
The aim of the 2002 project was to develop general infrastructure for
UML based software architecture modeling, to be used in a prototype
environment that supports modeling, analyzing, communicating,
documenting, maintaining, and monitoring of architecture design
artifacts. The aim of the 2003 follow-up project is to apply the
techniques and tools developed during 2002 on real software architecture
models provided by the customer, and use these case studies to validate
the ART approach.
The project is financed by, and carried out in a close co-operation
with, the Nokia Research Center in
Helsinki.