| Jeff Magee | |
| Other academic members: | |
| Jeff Kramer | |
| Naranker Dulay | |
| Susan Eisenbach | |
Software Architecture is concerned with the high-level organization of complex software systems. Systems are viewed in terms of the components used to construct them and the connectors used to combine these components. Architecture is critical in developing systems that are scalable and maintainable.
Labelled Transition System for composite telephone switching system. From "Fairness and Priority in Progress Property Analysis" by Dimitra Giannakopoulou, Jeff Magee, and Jeff Kramer.
Over the years, the group has centered much of its work on the architectural description language (ADL) Darwin. The work was funded by a series of EPSRC and ESPRIT funded projects culminating in the ARES project. Darwin was originally conceived in the context of distributed system development, however, as a result of the ARES project, it has found commercial application in the form of Koala, an ADL based on Darwin and used by Philips in the development of television product families.
More recently, the group has developed modeling techniques and tools that are targeted at analyzing the behaviour of systems in advance of implementation. This work funded by the EPSRC - is motivated by the conjecture that the architectural level is where modeling and analysis will yield the greatest benefit. The Labelled Transition System Analyser tool is available from the group's website. It has been applied to a wide range of applications from distributed services in the context of the ESPRIT funded C3DS project to the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) Short Term Conflict Alert (STCA) system.
Currently, research in the group is addressing systems with dynamically changing and self-organizing software architectures. These are typically internet-based systems that include elements of mobile computing. We are investigating the nature of components, middleware and analysis techniques in this challenging area.