A Method for Generating Software Architecture Models from Process Algebra Specifications

The transformation from specifying requirements to software architecture is a hot topic in software engineering. UML-RT (unified modeling language for realtime) is widely used in modeling the software architectures of real-time systems, but UML-RT models are often inaccurate or ambiguous, because they are created from natural language specifications. So UML-RT models need to be given formal semantics. Process algebra is a formal method being used to solve the communication problems of concurrent systems, which has precise syntax and accurate semantics to facilitate automatic verification and validation. TCSP is a real-time extension of the process algebra CSP (communicating sequential process), which is fit for specifying timing constraint behaviours of real-time systems. A method for generating software architecture models from process algebra specifications is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the transformation framework from natural language specifications to software architecture models is defined; Secondly, TCSP is used as requirements specification of real-time systems, and software architecture models are generated from process algebra specifications by a transformation mechanism which is established between TCSP and UML-RT; Lastly, an instance is given to validate the effectivity of this method in modeling real-time softwares. Experimental results show the UML-RT models generated by this method can increase the reliability for designing the software architecture of real-time systems.