Project Name: AADL to XML Translator

Sponsor:
Jim Scott (email: jscott@acm.org; tel: 256-313-5225)

Partners:
Ed Colbert (email: ecolbert@usc.edu)

Background:
An Avionics Architecture Description Language (AADL) is being developed as a standard by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Avionics Division. The AADL provides engineers a standard model-driven approach to specifying embedded computing hardware/software architectures which support safety-critical applications requiring high performance, high reliability, and portable component specifications resulting in rapid life-cycle evolvability. Vendors will offer numerous tools to support the AADL (e.g., analyzers, simulators, graphical editors, automatic program construction suites).

Problem:
The AADL standard specifies the language syntax in a variant of Backus-Naur Form (BNF) and specifies the language semantics through a combination of textual write-ups, tables, and hybrid automata diagrams. The AADL syntax is currently being checked using the Nortek Technologies ProGrammar Parser Development Toolkit. A formal representation of the language semantics to augment the syntax does not exist. A possible approach is the development of a fully annotated set of abstract syntax trees which would specify a significant portion of the semantics. It is anticipated that such an effort would result in specialized annotations to support a wide range of AADL static and dynamic semantics and would form the basis for translation, analyzers, simulators, and training. The goals of this effort are 1) to generate a combined syntactic/semantic specification of the AADL , 2) generate an XML representation of the specification (the XML must represent a fully equivalent, if not the primary, representation of the AADL specification), and 3) build a translator tool from AADL specifications to XML.

Constraints:
Probable use of the Programmar toolkit for building the translator which provides interfaces to C++, C, COM, Java, Visual Basic, etc.

Desired Deliverables:
AADL to XML Translator which runs on standard Windows PC’s