Investigating the Applicability of Architecture Description in Configuration Management and Software Deployment ; CU-CS-862-98

The discipline of software architecture has traditionally been concerned with high-level design. In particular, a variety of architecture description languages have been developed that are used to precisely capture a design. Additionally, analysis tools have been constructed that are used to verify particular properties of a design. However, today’s trend towards the development of component-based software seems to suggest a new use of software architecture. Because an architecture captures components and the connections among them, it could potentially be used as an organizing abstraction for many of the activities in the software life cycle. In this paper we present an initial investigation into the feasibility of such use. In particular, we closely examine the role system modeling plays in the fields of configuration management and software deployment, and relate this role to the system modeling capabilities of architecture description languages. The outcome of this investigation is twofold. First, we conclude that, for the specific cases of configuration management and software deployment, the use of software architecture brings opportunities to significantly extend the provided functionality. Second, we present requirements for a number of extensions to typical architecture description languages that are needed to make our approach viable. This work was supported in part by the Air Force Materiel Command, Rome Laboratory, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under Contract Numbers F30602-94-C-0253 and F30602-98-2-0163. The content of the information does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the Government and no official endorsement should be inferred.