Architecture Description Languages is an essential reference for both academic and professional researchers in the field of system engineering and design. The papers presented in this volume were selected from the workshop of the same name that was held as part of the World Computer Congress 2004 Conference, held in Toulouse, France in August 2004. This collection presents significant research and innovative developments and applications from both academic researchers and industry practitioners on topics ranging from Semantics to Tool and Development Environments.

The aim of an ADL is to formally describe software and hardware architectures. Usually, an ADL describes components, their interfaces, their structures, their interactions (structure of data flow and control flow) and the mappings to hardware systems. A major goal of such description is to allow analysis with respect to several aspects like timing, safety, reliability. The papers in this state-of-the-art volume cover such topics of interest as components, connectors, composition; semantics and formalization; verification, simulation and test; tools and development environments; standardization; industrial projects.

To encourage closer interaction between academic and industrial networking research communities, the workshop welcomed academic research papers as well as industrial contributions, and both are included here. Which makes this collection important not only for ADL experts and researchers, but also for all teachers and administrators interested in ADL.

Architecture Description Languages is an essential reference for both academic and professional researchers in the field of system engineering and design. The papers presented in this volume were selected from the workshop of the same name that was held as part of the World Computer Congress 2004 Conference, held in Toulouse, France in August 2004. This collection presents significant research and innovative developments and applications from both academic researchers and industry practitioners on topics ranging from Semantics to Tool and Development Environments. The aim of an ADL is to formally describe software and hardware architectures. Usually, an ADL describes components, their interfaces, their structures, their interactions (structure of data flow and control flow) and the mappings to hardware systems. A major goal of such description is to allow analysis with respect to several aspects like timing, safety, reliability. The papers in this state-of-the-art volume cover such topics of interest as components, connectors, composition; semantics and formalization; verification, simulation and test; tools and development environments; standardization; industrial projects. To encourage closer interaction between academic and industrial networking research communities, the workshop welcomed academic research papers as well as industrial contributions, and both are included here. Which makes this collection important not only for ADL experts and researchers, but also for all teachers and administrators interested in ADL.

M. Silva Significant changes have been occurring in industrialized countries since the Second World War. Production is moving towards sophisticated high qUality products, economy of scale has been replaced by economy of scope, jerky demands are progressively replacing steady demands, and competi tiveness is becoming a worldwide phenomenon. These trends require highly automated manufacturing systems with small set-up times and high flex ibility. As a consequence, implementation and running costs of modem manufacturing systems are drastically increasing, whereas their fields of application remain limited, and every day become even narrower, which increases the risk of early obsolescence. This is the reason why designers are trying to improve the preliminary design phase, also known as the 'paper study phase'. The preliminary design phase includes, but is not limited to, the func tional specification, and the evaluation of the system. Many tools exist to support the functional specification of manufactur ing systems. IDEFO is one of these tools. It leads, using a top-down ap proach, to a precise functional description of the required system. However, its use cannot be extended further. In general, the evaluation starts with a modeling step, which depends on the evaluation tool used, and ends by applying the model to find out its main dynamic characteristics. Two main approaches can be used to perform this task, namely simulation and math ematical approach. Using simulation, the modeling tool is either a classical computer language, or a simulation language."