A metamodel for the support of semantically rich modular architectures in the context of static architecture compliance checking

Architecture Compliance Checking (ACC) is an approach to verify the conformance of implemented program code to high-level models of architectural design. Static ACC is focused on the module views of architecture and especially on rules constraining the modular elements. This paper proposes an approach for support of semantically rich modular architectures (SRMAs) in the context of static ACC. An SRMA contains modules of semantically different types, like layers and components, constrained by rules of different types. Our approach is grounded in a metamodel, which enables support of rich sets of module and rule types and which enables extensive support of the semantics of these types. To validate the feasibility of the metamodel, an open source prototype implementation was developed, tested and applied in practice.