Using Simulation to Validate Style-Specific Architectural Refactoring Patterns

Abstract

When developing a new domain-specific architectural style, there can be uncertainty about the feasibility of using that style. In particular, the HADES architectural style contains refactoring patterns intended to remove undesirable scheduling features such as deadlock and livelock, but these patterns have not yet been validated. We report on the development of a simulator environment to help validate these refactoring patterns and generally demonstrate HADES architectures to non-specialists. The simulator implements the synchronisation and coordination specified by the architecture to help visualise the behaviour of the otherwise static architectural descriptions. We found simulation to be a useful tool in both visualising complex interaction semantics and in validating refactoring patterns