Behavioral view extension and synchronization for software architecture

Software architecture (SA) can be defined with a structural concern, a behavioral concern and a configuration concern, applied in design, analysis and deployment phases. Since a single notation cannot capture all concerns, several notations will be adopted to fully describe the architecture for successful development. Dynamic environments and changeable requirements imply frequent software artifact model evolution, which generates problems when synchronizing changes across software architecture models. In this paper, we propose a new bidirectional framework to implement the synchronization for SA models. We apply it in the structural xADL notation and behavioral Darwin/FSP notation. First, we extend the meta-model of xADL with behavioral features. Second, we define feature correspondence between meta-models of extended xADL notation and Darwin/FSP notation. Then, based on the feature correspondence, bidirectional transformation is executed and its two-way reflection semantics achieves the synchronization. The framework is illustrated with on a simple case study example to show the feasibility.