Scenario-Driven Analysis of Component-Based Software Architecture Models

Scenario-Driven Analysis of Component-Based Software Architecture Models

Abstract:

The architectural model of a system provides a high level description of a system in terms of components and connectors that coordinate the components to meet global requirements. Given a set of components and a scenario-based representation of the required application specific interaction requirements between the components, the application architecture design introduces connectors that provide the application level glue to coordinate the given components. Though the connectors can be introduced to serve multiple purposes, this paper focuses on the role of the connectors to provide causal connection between the components and coordinate the component behaviors to satisfy the scenario specific ordering constraints. For a given composition, the analysis problem is ensuring that i) the causal connection is consistent with the component interfaces and the scenario requirements, and ii) the ordering constraints specified by the scenario is satisfied by the composition under the causal mapping introduced by the connector. This paper presents an automated method to address the above problems. The method takes as input 1) the required interaction scenarios captured as sequence-diagrams that model the event-flows between the components, and 2) an application architectural model of the system in terms of components and connectors whose behaviors are modeled by finite-sate machine models. The method first checks for consistency with respect to the required causal connection and checks via symbolic simulation whether the required ordering constraint is met. The method has been implemented in an extended UML-based design and analysis environment to support component-based software architecture modeling and analysis.