Linguistic support for the evolutionary design of software architectures

As a program´s functionality evolves over time, its software architecture should evolve as well so that it continues to match the program´s design. This paper introduces the architecture language of Clock, a language for the development of interactive, multiuser applications. This architecture language possesses three properties supporting the easy restructuring of software architectures: restricted scoping supported by a constraint-based communication system, automatic message routing, and easy hierarchical restructuring of architectures. Clock´s architecture language has a visual syntax, supported by the Clock-Works programming environment