A Methodology for Architectural Design of Concurrent and Distributed Software Systems

Concurrent and distributed software applications are complex software systems that exploit highly parallel and distributed infrastructure to improve the quality of systems in cost-effective way. In order to assist the development of affordable concurrent and distributed software systems, a more effective approach of utilizing single-based architectural description languages (ADLs) is needed. In this paper, we describe an architectural modeling framework that can be used for specifying and analyzing distributed and concurrent software applications. Our key contribution is an architectural specification framework that integrates four important concepts: (1) an architectural description language known as syntactic theory (ST), (2) a high level Petri nets modeling language known as Hierarchical Predicate Transition Nets (HPrTNs), (3) a Pattern-Based Refinement Technique (PBRT), and (4) a systematic process for deriving architectural specifications from requirement specifications. Moreover, the method is heterogeneous modeling approach that specifies software architecture of a distributed and concurrent system in a top-down manner. The immediate benefits of our heterogeneous approach include: increased system analyzability, comprehensibility, reusability, and flexibility. We describe a case study to show the applicability of our approach.

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