A formal approach for guiding architecture design with data constraints

Abstract

The data managed in a software system is often controlled to behave dependently. Basically, dependent parts of the data can be controlled through their internal connections. However in a real-world system, dependencies among the data and its required behaviors are generally complex and designing its internal structure and control mechanism to satisfy all requirements becomes challenging. To cope with the problem, in this paper, we present a formal approach to guide an architecture design process so that given execution scenarios can be satisfied through iterative refinement of constraints among the data. For case studies, we applied our approach to a customer management system and a 3D game framework, and confirmed that a valid architectural design guide can be obtained.