Formal Modeling and Analysis of Architectural Standards

An important trend in commercial software development is the creation of architectural standards that describe a common reference architecture for a family of related applications. Currently architectural standards are typically described using informal, or semiformal, techniques, such as application programming interface speci cations, implementation guidelines, and box-and-line diagrams. In this paper we show how formal architectural modeling and analysis can be applied to architectural standards. In particular, we use the recently-issued High Level Architecture (HLA) Standard for Distributed Simulation to illustrate how architectural speci cation can expose several important classes of architectural design aws, including errors of omission, design inconsistencies, potential deadlocking behavior, and race conditions.