From Requirements to code: an Architecture-centric Approach for producing Quality Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents an architecture-centric, model-driven approach that uses formal validation and automated code generation from software architecture models to ensure quality in complex, distributed systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel integration of analysis, validation, and code generation techniques based on software architecture models for quality assurance.

Findings

Formal validation of architecture against requirements

Automatic Java code generation from architectural models

Use of existing tools to support the approach

Abstract

When engineering complex and distributed software and hardware systems (increasingly used in many sectors, such as manufacturing, aerospace, transportation, communication, energy, and health-care), quality has become a big issue, since failures can have economics consequences and can also endanger human life. Model-based specifications of a component-based system permit to explicitly model the structure and behaviour of components and their integration. In particular Software Architectures (SA) has been advocated as an effective means to produce quality systems. In this chapter by combining different technologies and tools for analysis and development, we propose an architecture-centric model-driven approach to validate required properties and to generate the system code. Functional requirements are elicited and used for identifying expected properties the architecture shall express. The architectural compliance to the properties is formally demonstrated, and the produced architectural model is used to automatically generate the Java code. Suitable transformations assure that the code is conforming to both structural and behavioural SA constraints. This chapter describes the process and discusses how some existing tools and languages can be exploited to support the approach.