Modeling architectural patterns using architectural primitives

Architectural patterns are a key point in architectural documentation. Regrettably, there is poor support for modeling architectural patterns, because the pattern elements are not directly matched by elements in modeling languages, and, at the same time, patterns support an inherent variability that is hard to model using a single modeling solution. This paper proposes tackling this problem by finding and representing architectural primitives, as the participants in the solutions that patterns convey. In particular, we examine a number of architectural patterns to discover those primitive abstractions that are common among the patterns, and at the same time demonstrate a degree of variability in each pattern. These abstractions belong in the components and connectors architectural view, though more abstractions can be found in other views. We have selected UML 2 as the language for representing these primitive abstractions as extensions of the standard UML elements. The added value of this approach is twofold: it proposes a generic and extensible approach for modeling architectural patterns by means of architectural primitives; it demonstrates an initial set of primitives that participate in several well-known architectural patterns.