Visual Software Architecture Description Based on Design Space

Boxology is the essence of software architecture description. In comparison with text-based languages,well-defined visual notations model software architecture at a high level of abstraction. They are easy to understand and easy to use due to its simplicity, but less expressive as many architectural properties can not be adequately represented. A key question to be answered in the design of a visual notation for the description of software architectures is what properties should be visually represented. This paper applies the theory of design space in the development of a visual notation called ExSAVN for software architectural modeling. It is based on the design space of software architectural elements to determine the properties of software architectures that are visually represented. It achieves balance between simplicity and expressiveness and supports incremental and iterative architectural design through a number of high level language facilities, which include the representation of undecided properties, hierarchical abstraction and type definition facilities. The paper also illustrated the style of ExSAVN by some examples of real systems.