ACME(ID:4905/acm001)

A simple, generic software architecture description language, meant in part as a common interchange format between other ADLs

Developed by David Garlan (CMU), Bob Monroe (CMU), Drew Kompanek (CMU), and David Wile (USC)


Related languages
ACME => AESOP   Extension of
ACME => Armani   Extension of
References:
  • Garlan, David; Monroe, Robert T.; Wile, David "Acme: An Architecture Description Interchange Language", Proceedings of CASCON '97, November 1997 view details Abstract: Numerous architectural description languages (ADLs) have been developed, each providing complementary capabilities for architectural development and analysis. Unfortunately, each ADL and supporting toolset operates in isolation, making it difficult to integrate those tools and share architectural descriptions. ACME is being developed as a joint effort of the software architecture research community as a common interchange format for architecture design tools. ACME provides a structural framework for characterizing architectures, together with annotation facilities for additional ADL-specific information. This scheme permits subsets of ADL tools to share architectural information that is jointly understood, while tolerating the presence of information that falls outside their common vocabulary. In this paper we describe ACME's key features, rationale, and technical innovations. External link: Online copy
  • Medvidovic, Nenad and Rosenblum, David S. "Domains of Concern in Software Architectures and Architecture Description Languages" pp199-212 view details Abstract: Software architectures shift the focus of developers from lines-of-code to coarser-grained elements and their interconnection structure. Architecture description languages (ADLs) have been proposed as domain-specific languages for the domain of software architecture. There is still little consensus in the research community on what problems are most important to address in a study of software architecture, what aspects of an architecture should be modeled in an ADL, or even what an ADL is. To shed light on these issues, we provide a framework of architectural domains, or areas of concern in the study of software architectures. We evaluate existing ADLs with respect to the framework and study the relationship between architectural and application domains. One conclusion is that, while the architectural domains perspective enables one to approach architectures and ADLs in a new, more structured manner, further understanding of architectural domains, their tie to application domains, and their specific influence on ADLs is needed.
          in R.F. Crew, "ASTLOG: A Language for Examining Abstract Syntax Trees" pp229-242 view details
  • Garlan, David and Wang, Zhenyu "A Case Study in Software Architecture Interchange" view details
          in R.F. Crew, "ASTLOG: A Language for Examining Abstract Syntax Trees" pp229-242 view details
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