Graphical notations, such as data flow diagrams and class diagrams, are widely used in software design and development. While being easy to understand and convenient to use, these graphical notations are not amendable to automated verification and transformation. This article provides an overview on visual assistance in software engineering, and it focuses on a graph grammar approach to visual software modeling, architectural design, and evolution. A graph grammar enables a high-level abstraction of the general organization of a class of software architectures, and it forms a basis for formal analysis and transformations. In this approach, software verification is performed through a syntax analyzer. Architectural evolution is achieved by applying predefined transformation rules.
Keywords:
software engineering;
visual languages;
graph grammars
[1]
Jing Dong,et al.
Design Pattern Compositions in UML
,
2003
.
[2]
James R. Cordy,et al.
A Syntactic Theory of Software Architecture
,
1995,
IEEE Trans. Software Eng..
[3]
Jiannong Cao,et al.
Design, Construction, and Application of a Generic Visual Language Generation Environment
,
2001,
IEEE Trans. Software Eng..
[4]
Daniel Le Métayer.
Describing Software Architecture Styles Using Graph Grammars
,
1998,
IEEE Trans. Software Eng..
[5]
Jiannong Cao,et al.
A Context-sensitive Graph Grammar Formalism for the Specification of Visual Languages
,
2001,
Comput. J..
[6]
David Harel,et al.
Statecharts: A Visual Formalism for Complex Systems
,
1987,
Sci. Comput. Program..
[7]
Xiaolei Qian,et al.
Correct Architecture Refinement
,
1995,
IEEE Trans. Software Eng..