Validating UML models against architectural profiles

Abstract

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has become a widely adopted standard in the software industry. While UML has established itself in detailed software design, its usage as an architecture description language is still taking its shape. In particular, there is a growing need for techniques to define domain specific architectural constraints and conventions in UML. We address this issue by adopting the concept of UML profiles for architectural design. Architectural profiles are specialized for describing and constraining software architecture descriptions for a given domain. We argue that these profiles represent an appropriate abstraction level to elaborate architectural constraints and conventions. We present a general schema for arranging architectural profiles and a set of conformance rules that define how these profiles are interpreted, constituting a profile definition language for validating architectural design. We introduce a tool for performing architectural validation and discuss the results of our initial case studies.

UML-based reverse engineering and model analysis approaches for software architecture maintenance

“…3 APPLYING ARCHITECTURAL PROFILES Architectural profiles represent the common architecture modeling language shared by both the RE-and MAprocesses, usually in the form of a conceptual profile and a group of view profiles [SeX03]. The conceptual profile defines the fundamental concepts (types) that are used throughout the entire architecture design and description, and the view profiles specify the concepts and rules that are specific only to this architectural view.…”

“…The architecture model is validated against these profiles and the found non-conformant incidents are reported. The approach is discussed in more detail in [SeX03]. The interpretation of the profiles follows the outline given in Section 3.…”

“…A profile is essentially an extension the UML specification using its built-in extension mechanisms. We define an architectural profile [SeX03] as a UML profile variant which presents a set of architectural rules and specifies a subset of UML models that can be considered legal in a particular context. In essence, the architectural profiles describe an architecture modeling language that the designer must follow.…”

“…to compare the original design-level models against the models reverse engineered from the source code. We have developed a technique and a tool for validating a given UML model against the architectural profiles [SeX03]. The architectural profiles should be followed correctly in the architecture design and maintenance process in order to guarantee that the resulting architecture design has necessary properties, or lacks undesirable ones.…”

UML-based tool support for separating application and architectural evolution

“…Probably the most promising approach is based on so-called profiles in UML, which can also be used to monitor obedience to architectural restrictions, as evidenced in [15]. Currently, we are working towards showing that in the context of UML one can treat patterns and UML profiles in a similar fashion, with some preliminary results already discussed in [14].…”