Building Product Populations with Software Components

ion function f : I -> D satisfies ⊇ Figure 6. Relation between Architecture, Design and Implementation Checking a design against an architecture can also be a mechanical process, at least for that part of the architecture that can be formalized. Note that architecture and design are expressed in the same language. In the next section we shall define this language and show an example of the operator ⊆. It is important to note that we have applied these techniques to those aspects of software architecture that are sometimes called the modular architecture [101], i.e. the static decomposition of a system in terms of layers, units, components, files, functions, et cetera. The techniques can in principle also be applied to more dynamical architectural structures, but discussion of that is outside the scope of this paper. 2.3 The Expression Language The expression language was designed with the following requirements in mind: • It should allow us to formalize design structures and architectural rules. • It should be generic so that we can use it for multiple aspects of design and also in multiple application domains.