| Along with the extension of the information system and software product scale, software architecture (SA) becomes a focus and key technique gradually in the software engineering domain, and it is paid more attention by domestic and international academic circles and industrial circles. SA concerns with the overall structure organization form of system, and it describes the high-level abstraction of system.Software architecture description is a chiefly research task. Describing SA by a suitable method will exert influence not only on the understanding and communication of developers, but also on the following work, for instance analysis, refinement and verification of system. Currently, the main methods of SA description are UML and ADL. UML is a visual modeling language, and it is suitable to each stage of the software's development. ADL is a kind of architecture description language. It is a basic tool which can describe SA formally. It adopts the sign system being closer to program language, and it is suitable to the modeling of different systems. They have respective merits in the aspect of describing SA.This paper introduces the basic concepts and description methods of SA, and compares the merits and shortcomings of UML and ADL in the aspect of SA description firstly. Then it analyses the method of SA description by using XYZ/ADL. A rule by which UML state diagram can be converted to XYZ/ADL is put forward. According to the characteristics of UML and ADL, a method that UML and XYZ/ADL have been combined together is applied in SA description process. And the feasibility of this method is verified by the research SA description and refinement of a factory automation system.The research result of this paper indicates that using the method which can combine UML and XYZ/ADL together will bring their benefits into SA description and refinement process, and it will make transition smoothly between every step of refinement of SA. |
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