A Distributed Software Architecture Description Language Based on Attributed Grammar

Most of the existing software architecture description languages (ADL) are based on finite state machines models, and when they are used to describe the large scale systems, the problem of state explosion is difficult to overcome. In the distributed software system, lots of components communicate with each other with complex restrictions, so the specifications of the interaction among the components need to be described by using an efficient method. A model for describing distributed system specifications based on attribute grammar (AG) is described in this paper. First, the AG is extended to refine the characters of distributed software, such as parallelism, synchronization and timing, and a distributed software architecture description language (DSADL) is introduced, and then a prototype of integrated environment for software architecture design is proposed based on the AG analyzer and the AG attribute calculator ,which not only supports the construction of distributed software architecture by GUI and the automatic generation of ADL, but also provides the verification and the analysis of the system. Its initial application shows that DSADL can help the programmers to analyze and design distributed software effectively, so the efficiency of the development can be improved greatly.