A component-based method for software architecture refinement

Architecture refinement has gradually became an important academic research field in modern software engineering since it was presented. Good architecture refinement ensures the integrity and consistency of software architecture, cuts down the cost and improves the quality of software. But the research of stepwise architecture refinement for software architecture is considered to be an underway stage due to the complexity of the conversion from the abstract to the specific architecture. This paper illustrates the features and usefulness of component-based refinement method and proposes a framework for novel architecture refinement approach. The work is based on the component of the architecture and on a series of formal languages for architecture refinement. Different levels of architecture have been formally refined from aspects of both structure and behavior, both static and dynamic. A simple example was illustrated to show the eminent feasibility and effectiveness of this approach with π-ARL.