SHOW publication #162 - ABLE Publications

Over the past decade there has been considerable experimentation with the design of architecture description languages that can provide a formal basis for descrip- tion and analysis of the architectures of component-based systems. As the eld has matured there has emerged among the software architecture research community general consensus about many aspects of the foundations for architectural represen- tation and analysis. One result has been the development of a generic architecture description language, called Acme, that can serve as a common representation for software architectures and that permits the integration of diverse collections of in- dependently developed architectural analysis tools. In this paper we describe the Acme language and tools, and our experience in using it to integrate architecture analysis tools and to describe component-based systems.