The Pi-ADL.NET project: An Inclusive Approach to ADL Compiler Design

摘要

This paper describes results and observations pertaining to the development of a compiler utility for an Architecture Description Language π-ADL, for the .NET platform. Architecture Description Languages or ADLs, are special purpose high level languages especially construed to define software architectures. π-ADL, a recent addition to this class of languages, is formally based on the π-Calculus, a process oriented formal method. The compiler for π-ADL, named π-ADL.NET, is designed with the view of bringing the architecture driven software design approach to the .NET platform. The process oriented nature and a robust set of parallelism constructs of π-ADL make the π-ADL.NET project a novel application of compiler techniques in the context of the .NET platform, with many valuable lessons learnt. This paper presents the π-ADL.NET effort from a compiler design perspective, and describes the inclusive approach driving the design that facilitates the representation of strong behavioral semantics in architecture descriptions. The subjects of parallel process modeling, communication and constructed data types are covered. The paper also documents the motivation, vision and future possibilities for this line of work. A detailed comparison with related work is also presented.