Status Report: A Technology Investigation Supporting Software Architecture and Analysis for Evolution
Agreement/Contract Number: F30602-97-2-0031
For the period: April 1999 through June 1999
Principal Investigators:
David Garlan and Mary Shaw
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891
E-mail:
garlan@cs.cmu.edu, mary.shaw@cs.cmu.edu
WWW Homepage: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~Compose/
Voice:
412-268-5056 (Garlan); 412-268-2589 (Shaw)
FAX:
412-268-5576  

1.0 Participants

Carnegie Mellon University

Faculty

David Garlan Associate Professor of Computer Science
Mary Shaw Alan J. Perlis Professor of Computer Science, Associate Dean for Professional Programs
Jeannette Wing Professor of Computer Science

Graduate Students

Craig Damon
Darrell Kindred
Robert O'Callahan
Bridget Spitznagel
Zhenyu Wang
Jianing Hu

Staff

Andrew Kompanek Senior Research Programmer

2.0 Ongoing Research & Development

Work on AcmeStudio and related tools continued. A prototype tool integration mechanism based on COM was prototyped. Work continued on supporting Armani features within AcmeStudio. We continued to support users using AcmeStudio and the Acme and Armani toolkits.

Bridget Spitznagel continued her work on support for compositional connectors: a mechanism for systematically creating new connectors by composing existing connectors. The mechanism allows existing connector types to be extended semi-automatically, to meet new, extrafunctional requirements of a system.

An initial design for an extension to Acme to support architectural mappings was developed. The mapping mechanism allows the description of relationships between architectural elements and the constraints that govern those relationships.

Began work with the ATAM group at the SEI to support architecture description using AcmeStudio and Acme during tradeoff analysis. This work will involve defining Acme representations for ATAM concepts and integrating AcmeStudio with ATAM-based tools.

Developed formal architectural model of Enterprise Java Beans in Wright.

Started work on classifying UML Modeling mechanisms for architectural description

We continued to collaborate with the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO) to provide a formal architectural model of the HLA.

3.0 Notable Accomplishments & Technology Transition

As part of work on compositional connectors, implemented a simple prototype of a tool which applies a limited set of composable transformations to a Java RMI connector, yielding a new connector with additional properties.

We released intermediate versions of AcmeStudio including bug fixes to the collaborators using AcmeStudio.

4.0 Progress on Inter/Intra Cluster Collaborations

Judith Dahman, Richard Weatherly (HLA)

We continued collaboration with DMSO on the effort the formalize the HLA standard. During this period, we extended the formal model to investigate "Bridge Federate" anomalies.

COLLABORATION WITH OTHER PROJECTS IN ARCHITECTURE CLUSTER

Peter Feiler (SEI)

We continued collaboration with Peter Feiler and Jun Li at SEI using Acme/Armani to model real-time performance and fault-tolerance architectural properties. Work continues on an environment built from the AcmeStudio environment and Armani language and toolset.

Rick Kazman, Mark Kline (SEI)

Began collaboration with Rick Kazman and Mark Kline at the SEI to support ATAM with AcmeStudio and Acme.

David Wile (USC ISI)

We continued to collaborate with Dave Wile at USC ISI on application of Acme to our ADLs and tools.

COLLABORATION WITH PROJECTS IN HIGH ASSURANCE CLUSTER

No new progress to report.

COLLABORATION WITH PROJECTS IN DESIGN MANAGEMENT CLUSTER

No new progress to report.

COLLABORATION WITH PROJECTS IN DYNAMIC LANGUAGES CLUSTER

No new progress to report.

5.0 Publications

The following are the papers that have been authored by the members of this contract during the reporting period. They have been organized into groups based on their status as submitted, accepted, or published. They represent transition of our research to the community at large.

Published:

David Garlan and Zhenyu Wang
A Case Study in Software Architecture Interchange
Proceedings of Coordination '99
April 1999

Craig A. Damon, Ralph Melton, Robert J. Allen,
Elizabeth Bigelow, James M. Ivers and David Garlan
Formalizing a Specification for Analysis: The {HLA} Ownership Properties
Carnegie Mellon University Technical Report CMU-CS-99-126
April 1999

6.0 Travel

The following are the talks, presentations, panels, lectures, workshops, and demonstrations given by the members of this contract during the reporting period. They represent transition of our research to the community at large.

David Garlan
EDCS Project Meeting
Santa Rosa, CA April 26-28

David Garlan
Program Chair
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) '99

Andrew Kompanek
Bridget Spitznagel
Demonstration: Acme and AcmeStudio
EDCS Demo Days
Washington, DC

Zhenyu Wang
Presented : Acme based software architecture interchange
Coordination 99 - Third International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 26-28 April 1999

7.0 Miscellaneous/Administrative/Problematic Issues

8.0 Plans For The Next Reporting Period

We will continue continue improving and supporting AcmeStudio, the Acme programmer's libraries, the Armani language other Acme-based tools. We will also continue research into ways in which to better support architectural modeling in this context, including support for mapping between different architectural views and relating architectures to implementations. Work to support compositional construction of connectors will also continue.

We will also continue work on the ADL toolkit and related efforts to integrate the various ADL-related technologies developed within the EDCS community.