Software Modeling & Program Architecture

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Abstractions about representing software and processes through models, diagrams, languages, components, states, and transformations. They span architectural views, data and control flow, metamodeling, modularity, programming formalisms, identifiers, and tool-supported system development.

45 abstractions in this family — domain-specific abstractions that sit near one another in structural-signature space (k-means over structural-signature embeddings). Each is shown with its short description.

• 4+1 architectural view model — A software-architecture description framework organizing one system into logical, development, process and physical views tied together by representative scenarios.
• Abstract state machine — A formal operational model in which each state is an arbitrary mathematical structure and guarded updates define discrete state transitions.
• Actor (UML) — A modeled role played by an external entity while interacting with the subject of a UML use-case model.
• API management — The governed lifecycle of publishing, securing, mediating, documenting, observing, versioning, and retiring application-programming interfaces for providers and consumers.
• Architecture astronaut — A software-design anti-pattern in which an architect pursues increasingly abstract, universal frameworks while losing contact with concrete requirements, implementation constraints, users and executable feedback.
• Artifact-centric business process model — A business-process model organized around the evolving lifecycle and data state of key business entities rather than a single prescribed activity flow.
• Business Process Modeling Language — A deprecated XML-based language for specifying executable business-process definitions, control flow, data and transactional behavior.
• Code wheel — A physical challenge-response copy-protection device that aligns concentric printed layers to reveal a requested lookup value.
• Common Component Architecture — A component-interface standard for high-performance scientific computing that connected language-neutral components—including Fortran—across heterogeneous parallel machines through SIDL-defined ports and framework services.
• Component Object Model — Microsoft's binary component architecture in which language-neutral objects expose versioned interfaces, manage identity and lifetime, and interact across apartments, processes or machines.
• Composite structure diagram — A UML diagram showing a classifier’s internal parts, ports, connectors and runtime collaborations.
• Control-flow diagram — A diagram that represents operations or activities and the conditional, repetitive, and sequential control paths connecting them.
• Data-flow diagram — A structured-analysis diagram representing how data moves among external entities, processes and stores within a system.
• Decision table — A tabular rule representation enumerating combinations of conditions and the actions prescribed for each combination.
• Design predicates — A software-integration testing model that classifies inter-unit call relationships and assigns complexity increments used to bound independent integration paths.
• EXPRESS (data modeling language) — An ISO-standard formal language for specifying product-data entity types, attributes, relationships, constraints and derived rules within STEP information models.
• FOSD program cubes — An n-dimensional feature-oriented representation whose axes encode independent variability dimensions and whose cells or transformations compose into members of a software product line.
• Function point — A standardized unit estimating software functional size from user-visible inputs, outputs, inquiries, data groups and interfaces.
• Grammar-oriented programming — A software-development approach that makes a domain grammar the primary executable model for a domain-specific language and its processing architecture.
• IDEF3 — A scenario-driven process-description method that captures activity sequences and object-state transitions from domain experts.
• Identity map pattern — A unit-of-work cache that guarantees one in-memory object instance per persistent database identity within a declared context.
• Internet-speed development — A late-1990s software-development method combining staged planning with iterative feature work, frequent integration and daily builds to shorten product cycles.
• Metamodeling — The construction and use of a model whose subject matter is a class of models, specifying their admissible elements, relations, constraints, semantics, and conformance rules.
• Method stub — A deliberately incomplete method implementation that preserves a callable interface and supplies placeholder behavior until the real implementation exists.
• Model transformation language — A specialized programming language for specifying mappings that create, update or synchronize models conforming to declared metamodels.
• Modular programming — A programming paradigm that decomposes software into cohesive units with explicit interfaces and limited dependence on one another.
• Object-modeling technique — An early object-oriented software-analysis and design method combining object, dynamic, and functional models across development stages.
• OpenFX (API) — An open host-plug-in interface standard for portable two-dimensional image effects and compositing modules, defining discovery, instances, parameters, images, rendering actions, threading, and host capability negotiation.
• Operational transformation — A concurrency-control technique that transforms editing operations against concurrent operations so replicas converge while preserving user intentions.
• Oracle unified method — Oracle's tailorable, iterative project-delivery methodology combining Unified Process concepts, business-process and use-case modeling, phase gates, tasks and reusable work-product templates.
• PEPA — A stochastic process algebra whose exponentially timed activities compose into finite-state continuous-time Markov models of computer and communication systems.
• Process Specification Language — The ISO 18629 formal ontology and interchange language for representing activities, occurrence, ordering and resources so heterogeneous process software can exchange meaning.
• Process-data diagram — A modeling diagram that places a process structure beside the data or deliverable structure it creates, linking activities directly to their outputs.
• Production Rule Representation — An Object Management Group metamodel for representing executable production rules, rule sets and forward-chaining semantics in a vendor-neutral UML-compatible form.
• Programming tool — Software whose primary functional role is to help create, inspect, transform, test, package or maintain other software.
• SED-ML — A machine-readable exchange format for specifying reproducible simulation experiments independently of the referenced computational models.
• Service autonomy principle — A service-oriented design principle that gives each service maximal practical control over its logic, runtime resources, data, deployment, and change cycle.
• SoftWare Hash IDentifier — A standardized intrinsic persistent identifier that names software source-code objects through their type and cryptographic content hash, with optional lineage and path qualifiers.
• Stereotype (UML) — A UML profile mechanism that specializes an existing metaclass with domain-specific semantics, tagged values and notation.
• Structured analysis — A systems-analysis method modeling required data transformations and control responses through hierarchical data-flow and related structured diagrams.
• Transformation language — A formal computer language specialized for specifying rule-governed transformations from source texts, trees, graphs or models into modified or differently represented outputs.
• Unidirectional data flow — A software-state architecture in which events trigger state changes in one direction and views derive from the resulting immutable or controlled state rather than mutating it bidirectionally.
• UXF — An XML-based interchange format for serializing UML diagrams so models can move among otherwise independent diagramming tools.
• View model — An architecture-description framework that defines a coherent set of viewpoints for representing one system to different stakeholder concerns.
• Virtual finite-state machine — An executable software specification that models a control system through named input conditions, virtual states, transitions and output actions.