Architects commonly use informal diagrams for the early design and communication of software systems. Due to their notational freedom and effectiveness for communication, informal diagrams are often preferred over models with a fixed syntax and semantics as defined by a modeling language. But precisely because of this lack of established semantics, these diagrams are of limited use in later development stages for analysis tasks such as consistency checking or change impact analysis. We present an approach to boost informal diagramming with an associated textual model for selected concepts captured in diagrams, and a synchronization mechanism between the diagram and the textual model. In this way, the architects can benefit both from continuing free-form diagramming and from having a textual model as a basis for analyzing the system.
This video is a short summary of the paper “From informal architecture diagrams to flexible blended models” by Robbert Jongeling from Mälardalen University. Authors are Robbert Jongeling, Federico Ciccozzi, Antonio Cicchetti, and Jan Carlson. The paper was published at the 16th European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA 2022) and awarded the Best paper award.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/Pia7zZFp9RE