ArCon

Component
Full name	ArCon
Project URL	http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/arcon/
Download URL	http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/arcon/downloads/list
License	-
Registration	-
Developer	Combitech
Creator(s)	Combitech
Launched	May 3th, 2011
Current Status	Active
Stable Version	1.4 and 1.5

History and development

ArCon - Architectural Conformance Checker

ArCon is a tool for architecture conformance validation of systems modelled in UML/SysML. ArCon can provide an easy to use and intuitive way of specifying architectural rules and a mechanism to automatically validate that the system under development conforms to the rules specified. ArCon can validate a model and detect errors in the models breaking the defined rules.

What problem does ArCon solve? To answer this question lets have a look at the role of architecture in the development process. In Figure 1(Upper left is a traditional process) traditional development process is shown.

The traditional process starts with the definition of the architecturally significant requirements; these are essentially the quality and non-functional requirements. Then the architect undertakes the architectural design addressing the architecture requirements. Essentially the architect makes a number of decisions on how the system should be designed in order to ensure that architectural requirements are fulfilled. The result of this is typically a high-level structure of the system, a framework of base-classes implementing the communication infrastructure of the system, and a set of structural and behavioural rules to follow in the design of the components that will populate the system model. The high level structure and the framework go into the system-model and the rules are specified in a textual document. During the architectural design the architecture is regularly validated against the architecture requirements and if necessary the requirements are renegotiated. When the architecture has been validated against its requirements the next development phase begins.

The use of the ArCon functionality provides a powerful method to both specify and disseminate architectural rules and to automatically inspect and enforce the architecture to a system under development, thus enabling early discovery of errors and avoiding work

Releases

First stable release: ArCon 1 available may 2011.

Latest stable release: ArCon 1 available may 2011.

Legend
Previous versions	Latest stable release	Next release

Version	Release date	Release log
ArCon 1.4	2011-05-03	First version of ArCo (C++ and Rhapsody 7.5.x )
ArCon 1.5	2012-xx-xx	First version of ArCo (C++ and Rhapsody 7.5.x, Rhapsody 7.6.x and Topcased/Papyrus)
ArCon 2.0	2012-xx-xx	First version of ArCo (Java and Eclipse based UML-tools e.g. Topcased/Papyrus)

Supported platforms

ArCon is both written in C++ and Java and is deployed as a plugin on Rhapsody(C++) and Eclipse(Java).

More specific info about Arcon 1.4
More specific info about Arcon 1.5
More specific info about Arcon 2.0