PCL-a language for modelling system architecture

There exist a number of CASE tools to support software re-engineering in several different languages. These tools automatically or semi-automatically analyse a system´s structure and re-structure that system into a more coherent form. However, the recovered structure is a control structure at a fine-level of detail. It is not possible to recover a more abstract architectural structure by source code processing. By architectural structure, we mean a more abstract model showing the principal sub-systems and modules making up the system, their interfaces, their composition relationships and other relevant inter-module relationships such as data flows. We argue that the discovery of this architectural structure is a critical part of the re-engineering process. We have developed a language, called PCL (Proteus Configuration Language), which is specifically intended for the architectural modelling of systems at an abstract level. The language allows the construction of hardware, software and documentation models and provides relationship definition facilities which can link these models. The systems described may be centralised or distributed, homogeneous or heterogeneous. PCL addresses the problem of architectural variability so that the architectural descriptions of different system versions may be combined into a single model