A distributed software architecture design framework based on attributed grammar

Software architectures shift the focus of developers from lines-of-code to coarser-grained architectural elements and their overall interconnection structure. There are, however, many features of the distributed software that make the developing methods of distributed software quite different from the traditional ways. Furthermore, the traditional centralized ways with fixed interfaces cannot adapt to the flexible requirements of distributed software. In this paper, the attributed grammar (AG) is extended to refine the characters of distributed software, and a distributed software architecture description language (DSADL) based on attributed grammar is introduced, and then a model of integrated environment for software architecture design is proposed. It can be demonstrated by the practice that DSADL can help the programmers to analyze and design distributed software effectively, so the efficiency of the development can be improved greatly.