Development of Hierarchical Broadcasting Software Architectures Using UML 2.0

The definition of a transparent software architecture is one of the key issues in the early development phases for complex distributed and reactive software systems. We show how to derive an architecture systematically for systems with communication models based on broadcasting. Adequate graphical description techniques for capturing interaction requirements and logical component architectures for broadcasting systems are unavailable so far. We introduce an extension to UML’s sequence diagrams to capture broadcasting scenarios. Furthermore, we present methodological steps for constructively deriving structural and behavioral aspects of the architecture under consideration from the captured scenarios.