A Unified Approach to Architecture Conformance Checking

Software erosion can be controlled by periodically checking for consistency between the de facto architecture and its theoretical counterpart. Studies show that this process is often not automated and that developers still rely heavily on manual reviews, despite the availability of a large number of tools. This is partially due to the high cost involved in setting up and maintaining tool-specific and incompatible test specifications that replicate otherwise documented invariants. To reduce this cost, our approach consists in unifying the functionality provided by existing tools under the umbrella of a common business-readable DSL. By using a declarative language, we are able to write tool-agnostic rules that are simple enough to be understood by non-technical stakeholders and, at the same time, can be interpreted as a rigorous specification for checking architecture conformance

On the Evaluation of a DSL for Architectural Consistency Checking

Software architecture erodes over time and needs to be constantly monitored to be kept consistent with its original intended design. Consistency is rarely monitored using automated techniques. The cost associated to such an activity is typically not considered proportional to its benefits. To improve this situation, we propose Dicto, a uniform DSL for specifying architectural invariants. This language is designed to reduce the cost of consistency checking by offering a framework in which existing validation tools can be matched to newly-defined language constructs. In this paper we discuss how such a DSL can be qualitatively and qualitatively evaluated in practice.

An algorithm for delay checking computer designs.

"Supported in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency ... under Contract no. US AF 30(602) 4144."

Design of totally self-checking asynchronous sequential machines.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Checking the correctness of water analyses with freezing point depressions,

Bibliography: leaf 54.

Checking the net contents of packaged goods.

"This fourth supplement was prepared to inform users of changes to NIST Handbook 133 that were adopted at the 79th Annual Meeting of the NCWM ..."