Specifying Structural Constraints of Architectural Patterns in the ARCHERY Language

Abstract

ARCHERY is an architectural description language for modelling and reasoning about distributed, heterogeneous and dynamically reconfigurable systems in terms of architectural patterns. The language supports the specification of architectures and their reconfiguration. This paper introduces a language extension for precisely describing the structural design decisions that pattern instances must respect in their (re)configurations. The extension is a propositional modal logic with recursion and nominals referencing components, i.e., a hybrid mu-calculus. Its expressiveness allows specifying safety and liveness constraints, as well as paths and cycles over structures. Refinements of classic architectural patterns are specified.