Specifying distributed software architectures

There is a real need for clear and sound design specifications of distributed systems at the architectural level. This is the level of the design which deals with the high-level organisation of computational elements and the interactions between those elements. The paper presents the Darwin notation for specifying this high-level organisation. Darwin is in essence a declarative binding language which can be used to define hierarchic compositions of interconnected components. Distribution is dealt with orthogonally to system structuring. The language supports the specification of both static structures and dynamic structures which may evolve during execution. The central abstractions managed by Darwin are components and services. Services are the means by which components interact.In addition to its use in specifying the architecture of a distributed system, Darwin has an operational semantics for the elaboration of specifications such that they may be used at runtime to direct the construction of the desired system. The paper describes the operational semantics of Darwin in terms of the π-calculus, Milner's calculus of mobile processes. The correspondence between the treatment of names in the π-calculus and the management of services in Darwin leads to an elegant and concise π-calculus model of Darwin's operational semantics. The model is used to argue the correctness of the Darwin elaboration process. The overall objective is to provide a soundly based notation for specifying and constructing distributed software architectures.