Formal Refinement of Software Architectures Based on Rewriting Logic

As the end-users’ expectations increase, software systems grow in size and complexity. To avoid design errors that are expensive when detected during the implementation phase, a high level model of the system is needed, i.e. the software architecture. Any architectural design is aiming to produce an executable software, but the manual application code generation may introduce errors. However, a few software architecture description languages propose refinement mechanisms leading from an abstract architectural specification to a more complete, more detailed description of the system. This paper presents a new and formal approach of architecture refinement facilitating software development, using transformation patterns based on rewriting logic.