<bold>A UML rule-based approach for describing and checking dynamic software architectures</bold>

In this paper we propose a UML based approach for describing and checking dynamic software architectures. In fact, the UML profile enables us to model dynamic software architectures by three aspects: the first one defines the architectural style of an application, the second describes a set of reconfiguration operations and the last one specifies the coordination among the reconfiguration operations defined in the above aspect. The built models are automatically checked through a set of syntactical rules. These models are automatically transformed into formal Z specifications in order to prove architectural properties such as consistency and invariants preservation against reconfiguration.