Mapping Architectural Concepts to UML-RT

Complex software systems require expressive notations for representing their software architectures. Two competing paths have emerged, one using a specialized notation for architecture--or architecture description language (ADL), the other using notations applied generally throughout design, such as UML. The latter has a number of benefits, including familiarity to developers, close mappings to implementations, and commercial tool support. However, it remains an open question how best to use object-oriented notations for architectural description and whether they are sufficiently expressive as currently defined. In this paper, we present a mapping between Acme, a notation designed for expressing architectures, and the UML Real-Time Profile--an object-oriented design notation. Specifically, we describe (a) how to map Acme descriptions to descriptions in the UML Real-Time Profile, and (b) the places where this mapping breaks down.