A formal architectural design patterns-based approach to software understanding

Mastering the complexity of programs and systems, particularly distributed systems, should lead to significant improvements in program and system understanding. We present a formal approach for (distributed) software understanding based on abstraction hierarchies represented by architectural design patterns. This approach allows us to model the distributed software applications through a formal model representing the underlying structure. The representation uses instances of architectural design patterns which can hide details that may be irrelevant in specific situations. The formal models which are produced could be used as a basis for reasoning, code generation, and measuring the “goodness” of a design