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Workshop on Studies of Software Design

WSSD 1993: Studies of Software Design pp 64–76Cite as

Formal approaches to software architecture

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1078))

Abstract

An important goal in software engineering is to describe complex software systems at an architectural level of abstraction. While good software engineers routinely employ architectural concepts in their designs these concepts are typically used idiomatically and in an ad hoc fashion. What appears to be missing is a formal basis for software architecture. But what exactly does this mean? In this paper we illustrate by example three approaches to formalizing software architecture. The first represents an industrial development effort to formalize a specific class of applications. The second shows how to use formalism to understand the design space for a commonly used architectural style. The third considers the problem of providing a formal basis for the generic notion of architectural interconnection.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 15213, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    David Garlan

Authors
  1. David Garlan
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David Alex Lamb

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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Garlan, D. (1996). Formal approaches to software architecture. In: Lamb, D.A. (eds) Studies of Software Design. WSSD 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1078. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0030520

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0030520

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-61285-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68434-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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