An Architecture Description Language Based on Dynamic Description Logics

ADML is an architectural description language based on Dynamic Description Logic for defining and simulating the behavior of system architecture. ADML is being developed as a new formal language and/or conceptual model for representing the architectures of concurrent and distributed systems, both hardware and software. ADML embraces dynamic change as a fundamental consideration, supports a broad class of adaptive changes at the architectural level, and offers a uniform way to represent and reason about both static and dynamic aspects of systems. Because the ADML is based on the Dynamic Description Logic DDL(

$\mathcal{SHON}$

(D)), which can represent both dynamic semantics and static semantics under a unified logical framework, architectural ontology entailment for the ADML languages can be reduced to knowledge base satisfiability in DDL(

$\mathcal{SHON}$

(D)), and dynamic description logic algorithms and implementations can be used to provide reasoning services for ADML. In this article, we present the syntax of ADML, explain its underlying semantics using the Dynamic Description Logic DDL(

$\mathcal{SHON}$

(D)), and describe the core architecture description features of ADML.