SAE AADL Supports Multiple and Extensible Analysis Approaches
The SAE Architecture Analysis & Design Language (AADL) is a textual and graphical language used to describe the structure (software and hardware architecture) of performance-critical real-time systems as an assembly of software components mapped onto an execution platform. The language can describe
- functional interfaces to components (such as data inputs and outputs) and performance-critical aspects of components (such as timing)
- how components interact, such as how data inputs and outputs are connected or how application software components are allocated to execution platform components
- the dynamic behavior of the runtime architecture
The language is designed to be extensible to accommodate analyses of the runtime architectures that the core language does not completely support. Extensions can take the form of new properties and analysis-specific notations that can be associated with components.
Because the AADL supports multiple and extensible analysis approaches, it provides the ability to analyze the cross-cutting impacts of change in the architecture in one specification using multiple analysis tools.
The AADL specification language has been designed to be used with analysis tools that support the automatic generation of the source code needed to integrate the system components and build a system executive. Since the models and the architecture specification drive the design and implementation, they can be maintained to permit model- driven architecture based changes throughout the system life cycle.