AcmeStudio: Supporting Style-Centered Architecture Development

Bradley Schmerl, and David Garlan

Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Software Engineering, Edinburgh, Scotland, May 23-28, 2004.

Online links: PDF

Abstract
Software architectural modeling is crucial to the development of high-quality software. Software engineering tool support is required for this activity, so that models can be developed, viewed, analyzed, and refined to implementations. This support needs to be provided in a flexible and extensible manner so that the tools can fit into a company s process and can use particular, perhaps company-defined, domain-specific architectural styles. Early architecture development environments were restricted to supporting particular architectural styles, and were not easy to tailor to other styles or domains. In this research demonstration, we describe AcmeStudio, a styleneutral architecture development environment that can (1) allow architects to tailor the environment for particular domains; (2) be used as a framework for integrating domain-specific architectural analyses; and (3) can be extended to integrate with other tools that are used in a company s software development process. We illustrate the main features of AcmeStudio and provide some insight into how we have tailored it to real-world domains specific to NASA and Ford Motor Company.
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For further information, please visit the home pages of the ABLE research project and Carnegie Mellon University's Composable Systems Group.


Last modified: 9/23/2004. For comments and problems, contact able-help@cs.cmu.edu.