WCRE 1998 Most Influential Paper: Grokking Software Architecture

This paper is a retrospective arising from a WCRE paper published in 1998 promoting a relational approach to manipulate software architecture and to help solve various problems in software analysis. That paper explains how Tarskipsilas binary relational algebra, embedded in a language such as Grok, can solve such problems. Tarskipsilas notation is elegant and often efficiently executable when the subject at hand is characterized by parts with binary relations between them. Software architecture, especially as-built architecture, is such a subject. This paper concentrates on the following three questions. What impact can a relational approach have on our understanding of software architecture? What Grok-languages exist and what are their strengths? How have Grok-like languages been used to solve problems in software architecture or software analysis?