Pattern-based rewrite and refinement of architectures using graph theory

With the continuous growth of IT application systems, the complexity of architecture modeling and development increases. Patterns document proven solutions for recurring problems in an abstract and human readable manner. Within the domain of IT architectures, they should support the architecture modeling and development process. Due to the documentation of patterns as text documents, they cannot be applied to an architecture automatically: patterns have to be read, understood, adapted to the corresponding use case, and realized manually over and over again. Consequently, architecture modeling considering the variety of documented patterns becomes even more complex and time-consuming. To tackle these issues, we introduce an approach and for an automated application and realization of patterns in architectural graphs using graph transformation techniques. This eases the architecture modeling process in which proven solutions for recurring problems can be selected as required and applied automatically. We present the concept, formalization, and validate our approach based on an application example.