Architectural Programming with MontiArcAutomaton

Modeling software architectures usually requires programming the behavior of components interfacing general programming language (GPL) libraries. This raises a gap between modeling activities and programming activities that entails switching between both activities, which requires considerable effort. Current research on architecture description languages (ADLs) focuses on employing state-based component behavior modeling techniques or integrating handcrafted GPL artifacts into skeletons generated from architecture models. The former is rarely feasible to interface with GPL libraries, the latter opens the aforementioned gap. We integrate GPLs, reified as modeling languages, into the MontiArcAutomaton ADL to enable defining component behavior on model level without considering the idiosyncrasies of generated artifacts. To this effect, we apply results from software language engineering to enable a configurable embedding of GPLs as behavior languages into ADLs. This ultimately enables architecture modelers to focus on modeling activities only and, hence, reduces the effort of switching between modeling and programming activities. Keywords–Model-Driven Engineering, Architecture Description Languages, Architectural Programming.